Plain  Facts 
About  a  Great  Evil 


BY 

CHRISTABEL  PANKHURST,  LL.B. 


NEW  YORK: 
THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  FUND  OF 

THE  MEDICAL  REVIEW  OF  REVIEWS 
1913 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
CHRISTABEL  PANKHURST 


TO 

THE  MEN  AND  WOMEN 
OF  TOMORROW 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 5 

THE  END  OF  A  CONSPIRACY 13 

A  WOMAN'S  QUESTION .24 

How  TO  CURE  THE  GREAT  PESTILENCE    ...  34 

THE  EXTENT  OF  THE  EVIL 47 

CHASTITY  AND  THE  HEALTH  OF  MEN      ...  58 

THE  DANGERS  OF  MARRIAGE — I 71 

THE  DANGERS  OF  MARRIAGE — II 87 

THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  BIRTH-RATE      ....  102 

WHAT  WOMEN  THINK 112 

APPENDIX 

THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PICCADILLY  FLAT    .     .   137 
THE  GOVERNMENT  AND  WHITE  SLAVERY      .     .   148 


298653 


INTRODUCTION 

THIS  book  deals  with  what  is  commonly  de- 
scribed as  the  Hidden  Scourge,  and  is  written 
with  the  intention  that  this  scourge  shall  be 
hidden  no  longer,  for  if  it  were  to  remain  hid- 
den, then  there  would  be  no  hope  of  abolishing 

it 

Men  writers  for  the  most  part  refuse  to  tell 
what  the  Hidden  Scourge  is,  and  so  it  becomes 
the  duty  of  women  to  do  it. 

The  Hidden  Scourge  is  sexual  disease, 
which  takes  two  chief  forms — syphilis  and 
gonorrhoea.  These  diseases  are  due  to  pros- 
titution— they  are  due,  that  is  to  say,  to  sexual 
immorality.  But  they  are  not  confined  to 
those  who  are  immoral.  Being  contagious, 
they  are  communicated  to  the  innocent,  and 
especially  to  wives.  The  infection  of  innocent 
wives  in  marriage  is  justly  declared  by  a  man 

5 


,-,  6:  ,.;•.;: :--/;:;    ;  /.Introduction 

doctor  to  be  "The  crowning  infamy  of  our  so- 
cial life." 

Generally  speaking,  wives  who  are  thus  in- 
fected are  quite  ignorant  of  what  is  the  matter 
with  them.  The  men  who  would  think  it  in- 
delicate to  utter  in  their  hearing  the  words 
syphilis  and  gonorrhoea,  seem  not  to  think  it 
indelicate  to  infect  them  with  the  terrible  dis- 
eases which  bear  these  names. 

The  sexual  diseases  are  the  great  cause  of 
physical,  mental,  and  moral  degeneracy,  and 
of  race  suicide.  As  they  are  very  widespread 
(from  75  to  80  per  cent,  of  men  becoming  in- 
fected by  gonorrhoea,  and  a  considerable 
percentage,  difficult  to  ascertain  precisely,  be- 
coming infected  with  syphilis),  the  problem  is 
one  of  appalling  magnitude. 

To  discuss  an  evil,  and  then  to  run  away 
from  it  without  suggesting  how  it  may  be 
cured,  is  not  the  way  of  Suffragettes,  and  in 
the  following  pages  will  be  found  a  proposed 
cure  for  the  great  evil  in  question.  That  cure, 


Introduction  7 

briefly  stated,  is  Votes  for  Women  and 
Chastity  for  Men.  Quotations  and  opinions 
from  eminent  medical  men  are  given,  and  these 
show  that  chastity  for  men  is  healthful  for 
themselves  and  is  imperative  in  the  interests 
of  the  race. 

The  use  of  remedies,  such  as  mercury  and 
"606,"  is  no  substitute  for  the  prevention  of 
sexual  disease.  Drugs  and  medical  concoc- 
tions will  not  wash  away  the  mental  and  moral 
injury  sustained  by  the  men  who  practise  im- 
morality, nor  are  they  adequate  as  a  cure  for 
the  body.  The  sexual  diseases  are  particu- 
larly intractable  to  cure,  and  it  is  never  possi- 
ble to  prove  that  a  cure  has  been  effected,  so 
that  the  disease,  while  apparently  cured,  is 
often  only  hidden  and  ready  to  break  out 
again. 

Regulation  of  vice  and  enforced  medical  in- 
spection of  the  White  Slaves  is  equally  futile, 
and  gives  a  false  appearance  of  security  which 
is  fatal.  Chastity  for  men — or,  in  other 


8  Introduction 

words,  their  observance  of  the  same  moral 
standard  as  is  observed  by  women — is  there- 
fore indispensable. 

Votes  for  Women  will  strike  at  the  Great 
Scourge  in  many  ways.  When  they  are  citi- 
zens women  will  feel  a  greater  respect  for 
themselves,  and  will  be  more  respected  by  men. 
They  will  have  the  power  to  secure  the  enact- 
ment of  laws  for  their  protection,  and  to 
strengthen  their  economic  position. 

The  facts  contained  in  this  book  constitute 
an  overwhelming  case  for  Votes  for  Women. 
They  afford  reasons  more  urgent  and  of 
greater  human  importance  than  any  other, 
that  women  should  have  the  Vote. 

The  knowledge  of  what  the  Hidden  Scourge 
really  is,  and  of  how  multitudes  of  women 
are  the  victims  of  it,  will  put  a  new  and  great 
passion  into  the  movement  for  political  enfran- 
chisement. It  will  make  that  movement  more 
than  ever  akin  to  all  previous  wars  against 
slavery. 


Introduction  9 

The  facts  contained  in  this  book  are  not 
without  their  bearing  upon  the  question  of 
militancy.  There  has  been  vigorous  criticism 
of  the  policy  of  destroying  property  for  the 
sake  of  Votes  for  Women.  That  criticism  is 
silenced  by  the  retort  that  men  have  destroyed, 
and  are  destroying,  the  health  and  life  of 
women  in  the  pursuit  of  vice. 

One  of  the  chief  objects  of  the  book  is  to 
enlighten  women  as  to  the  true  reason  why 
there  is  opposition  to  giving  them  the  vote. 
That  reason  is  sexual  vice. 

The  opponents  of  Votes  for  Women  know 
that  women,  when  they  are  politically  free, 
and  economically  strong,  will  not  be  purchas- 
able for  the  base  uses  of  vice. 

Those  who  want  to  have  women  as  slaves, 
obviously  do  not  want  women  to  become  vo- 
ters. 

All  the  high-sounding  arguments  against 
giving  votes  to  women  are  a  sham — a  mere  at- 
tempt to  cover  up  the  real  argument  against 


io  Introduction 

this  reform,  which  argument,  we  repeat,  is 
sexual  vice. 

It  is  said  by  hypocritical  opponents  of  Votes 
for  Women  that  women  must  not  vote  because 
men  protect  them  already.  Women  will  not 
listen  to  that  excuse  any  longer,  now  that  they 
know  what  men's  protection  means. 

It  is  in  the  interests  of  the  nation  that  these 
same  hypocritical  opponents  profess  to  resist 
Votes  for  Women.  How  hollow  that  argu- 
ment is  seen  to  be  when  it  is  realised  that  men 
are  constantly  infecting  and  reinfecting  the 
race  with  vile  disease,  and  so  bringing  about 
the  downfall  of  the  nation! 

Decidedly,  women's  knowledge  of  the  Great 
Scourge  will  do  more  than  anything  else  to 
bring  Votes  for  Women  nearer. 

Every  young  woman  who  reads  these  pages 
will  be  warned  of  a  great  danger,  whose  ex- 
istence she  may  not  until  now  have  suspected. 
It  is  because  of  the  need  that  young  girls  shall 
have  timely  warning  of  this  danger  that  the 


Introduction  1 1 

question  is  here  discussed  in  very  plain  and  def- 
inite terms. 

It  remains  to  be  said  that  several  of  the  en- 
suing chapters  have  appeared  in  the  pages  of 
the  Suffragette,  and  are  now  with  others  pub- 
lished as  a  book  in  consequence  of  many 
urgent  requests  that  they  might  be  available 
in  permanent  form. 

CHRISTABEL  PANKHURST. 


PLAIN  FACTS 
ABOUT  A   GREAT  EVIL 

THE  END  OF  A  CONSPIRACY 

Ax  last,  the  doctors  to  the  rescue!  Forty  of 
the  most  prominent  among  them  have  signed  a 
manifesto  demanding  the  appointment  of  a 
Royal  Commission  to  inquire  into  the  subject 
of  venereal  disease — the  disease,  that  is  to  say, 
which  is  caused  by  sexual  vice.  The  doctors 
who  have  signed  this  manifesto  are  forty  in 
number,  and  they  include  Sir  Thomas  Bar- 
low, Sir  William  Osier,  Sir  John  Bland  Sut- 
ton,  Mr.  F.  W.  Mott,  Sir  Victor  Horsley,  Dr. 
Mary  Scharlieb,  Mr.  D'Arcy  Power.  They 
stipulate  that  the  membership  of  the  suggested 
Royal  Commission  shall  include  a  substantial 
majority  of  medical  men.  The  Suffragettes 

13 


14      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

demand  that  one-half  at  least  of  its  members 
shall  be  women. 

The  doctors  point  out  that  tuberculosis,  in- 
sanity, scarlet  fever,  typhoid,  cancer,  and  other 
diseases  are  being  fought  by  State  and  pri- 
vate enterprise,  but,  they  continue,  "in  all  this 
organised  effort  there  is  one  noteworthy  omis- 
sion: there  has  always  been  a  conspiracy  of 
silence  as  regards  venereal  disease." 

The  Suffragettes  are,  according  to  the 
judges,  not  unacquainted  with  conspiracy  of 
one  sort,  but  we  would  point  out  that  they  long 
since  refused  to  be  a  party  to  the  conspiracy 
of  silence  regarding  venereal  disease.  For 
many  a  day  they  have  been  clamouring  for 
something  to  be  done  to  stamp  out  this  fright- 
ful plague. 

The  time  has  come,  say  the  doctors,  when 
it  is  a  national  duty  to  face  facts  and  to  bring 
them  prominently  to  the  notice  of  the  public. 
They  state  as  follows  the  terrible  problem  with 
which  the  public  has  to  deal : 


The  End  of  a  Conspiracy  15 

"The  worst  form  of  venereal  disease  is 
highly  contagious,  and  dire  in  its  effects.  It 
claims  its  victims  not  only  from  those  who 
have  themselves  to  blame  for  contracting  it. 
It  is  one  of  those  diseases  that  may  be  trans- 
mitted from  parent  to  child,  so  that  the  off- 
spring of  a  sufferer  is  born  with  the  virus 
actually  in  its  tissues,  to  cause,  it  may  be,  hid* 
eous  deformity,  or  blindness,  or  deafness,  or 
idiocy,  ending  often  in  premature,  though  not 
untimely,  death." 

Truth  to  tell,  further  inquiry  is  hardly  nec- 
essary, though  a  Royal  Commission  will  cer- 
tainly be  the  means  of  enlightening  women  as 
to  the  nature  and  extent  of  this  terrible  evil. 
Men  already  know  a  great  deal,  and  doctors 
know  most  of  all.  No  Royal  Commission  is 
needed  to  discover  the  cause  of  venereal  dis- 
ease. Its  cause  is  perfectly  well  known.  As 
one  writer  has  well  expressed  it,  "the  breed- 
ing-place of  all  venereal  diseases  without  ex- 
ception is  in  the  social  institution  called 


16      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

prostitution,  or  sexual  promiscuity;  in  the  de- 
basement and  degradation  of  what  should  be 
the  highest  of  physical  powers — those  involved 
in  the  act  of  generation." 

The  doctors  urge  that  both  the  cure  and 
prevention  of  venereal  disease  shall  be  consid- 
ered. Women  will  lay  stress  upon  prevention, 
because  even  if  cure  were  possible  in  the  phys- 
ical sense,  it  is  impossible  in  the  moral  sense. 
A  community  which  tolerates  prostitution  is  a 
community  which  is  morally  diseased.  The 
man  prostitute  (for  why  should  we  give  this 
name  only  to  the  woman  partner  in  immoral- 
ity?) has  his  soul  infected  as  well  as  his  body. 

We  repeat  that  where  these  terrible  diseases 
are  concerned  prevention  is  better  than  cure. 
It  is  not  only  better  than  cure,  but  it  is  the 
only  cure,  for  whether  these  diseases  are  cura- 
ble even  in  the  narrowest  sense  of  the  term  is 
very  doubtful,  and  even  when  cured  they  can 
be  contracted  again.  Everybody  admits  that 
one  attack  of  gonorrhoea  does  not  give  immu- 


The  End  of  a  Conspiracy  17 

nity  against  subsequent  attacks,  and  the  idea 
that  one  attack  of  syphilis  gives  immunity 
from  other  attacks  is  not  very  seriously  enter- 
tained by  experts.  As  one  authority  says: 
"The  reason  why  so  few  cases  of  reinfection 
are  seen  is  because  so  few  cases  are  really 
cured,  i.  e.  they  are  syphilitic  and  cannot  be 
reinfected." 

As  the  hope  of  curing  venereal  diseases  is 
so  illusory,  prevention  is  obviously  the  true 
policy.  No  individual  can  hope  to  avoid  these 
diseases  except  by  abstaining  from  immoral 
sexual  intercourse,  and  similarly  a  nation  can- 
not remain  uninfected  so  long  as  prostitution 
exists. 

Therefore  prostitution  must  go!  At  this 
shrieks  of  protest  will  be  raised.  We  shall 
hear  the  usual  balderdash  about  "human  na- 
ture" and  "injury  to  man's  health/'  Human 
nature  is  a  very  wide  term,  and  it  covers  a 
multitude  of  sins  and  vices  which  are  not  on 
that  account  any  the  more  to  be  tolerated.  It 


1 8      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

is  human  nature  to  rob  and  to  kill.  Cannibal- 
ism itself  is  in  the  nature  of  certain  human  be- 
ings. Robbing,  killing,  and  cannibalism  are 
nevertheless  all  forbidden,  and  the  people  who 
venture  to  let  go  their  "human  nature"  in  these 
directions  are  comparatively  few! 

Why  is  human  nature  to  have  full  scope 
only  in  the  one  direction  of  sexual  vice? 
The  answer  to  that  question  is  that  men  have 
got  all  the  power  in  the  State,  and  therefore 
make  not  only  the  laws  of  the  State,  but  also 
its  morality. 

According  to  man-made  morality,  a  woman 
who  is  immoral  is  a  "fallen"  woman  and  is 
unfit  for  respectable  society,  while  an  immoral 
man  is  simply  obeying  the  dictates  of  his  hu- 
man nature,  and  is  not  even  to  be  regarded  as 
immoral.  According  to  man-made  law,  a  wife 
who  is  even  once  unfaithful  to  her  husband 
has  done  him  an  injury  which  entitles  him  to 
divorce  her.  She  can  raise  no  plea  of  "human 
nature"  in  her  defence.  On  the  other  hand,  a 


The  End  of  a  Conspiracy  "19 

man  who  consorts  with  prostitutes,  and  does 
this  over  and  over  again  throughout  his  mar- 
ried life,  has,  according  to  man-made  law,  been 
acting  only  in  accordance  with  human  nature, 
and  nobody  can  punish  him  for  that. 

One  is  forced  to  the  conclusion,  if  one  ac- 
cepts men's  account  of  themselves,  that  wom- 
en's human  nature  is  something  very  much 
cleaner,  stronger,  and  higher  than  the  human 
nature  of  men.  But  Suffragettes,  at  any  rate, 
hope  that  this  is  not  really  true.  They  have 
more  faith  in  men  than  men  have  in  them- 
selves, and  they  believe  that  a  man  can  live  as 
pure  and  moral  a  life  as  a  woman  can.  The 
woman's  ideal  is  to  keep  herself  untouched  un- 
til she  finds  her  real  mate.  Let  that  be  the 
man's  ideal,  too! 

Men's  health  can  be  preserved  only  at  the 
price  of  prostitution — such  is  the  ridiculous 
and  wicked  theory  advanced  by  many  men  and 
some  doctors.  The  truth  is,  that  prostitution 
is  the  greatest  of  all  dangers  to  the  health  of 


2O      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

men.  In  the  first  place  there  is  the  risk 
amounting  to  certainty  of  infection  by  the  ter- 
rible diseases  we  are  considering.  Not  only 
so,  but  prostitution  involves  a  futile  and  waste- 
ful expenditure  of  men's  energy — energy 
which  they  greatly  need  to  enable  them  to  hold 
their  own  in  science,  art,  athletics,  industry, 
and  commerce. 

And  what  of  women's  health?  No  longer 
will  they  accept  the  theory  that  their  health 
and  dignity  are  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  health 
of  the  other  sex.  Merely  to  state  the  proposi- 
tion that  women  should  suffer  physically  and 
spiritually  for  the  benefit  of  men  is  to  show  its 
falsity.  Nature  certainly  never  intended  so 
monstrous  a  thing!  Indeed,  it  is  very  plain 
to  anyone  with  the  smallest  intelligence  that 
the  ruin  of  women  means  the  ultimate  ruin  of 
men. 

It  did  not  need  the  doctors'  manifesto  to 
warn  the  more  instructed  amongst  women  that 
prostitution  and  the  diseases  caused  by  it  are 


The  End  of  a  Conspiracy  "21 

a  menace  to  themselves  and  their  children. 
But  vast  numbers  of  women  are  still  without 
this  knowledge.  Innocent  wives  are  infected 
by  their  husbands.  They  suffer  torment; 
their  health  is  ruined;  their  power  to  become 
mothers  is  destroyed,  or  else  they  become  the 
mothers  of  diseased,  crippled,  blind,  or  insane 
children.  But  they  are  not  told  the  reason  of 
all  this.  Their  doctor  and  their  husband  keep 
them  in  ignorance,  so  that  they  cannot  even 
protect  themselves  from  future  danger. 

Healthy  girls  enter  into  marriage  without 
the  smallest  idea  of  the  risk  they  are  incurring. 
Nobody  tells  them,  as  Dr.  John  W.  Barrett 
tells  us  in  his  article  in  the  Bedrock,  the  scien- 
tific review,  that  "we  know,  from  very  careful 
insurance  medical  records,  that  the  great  ma- 
jority of  men  put  themselves  in  the  way  of  in- 
fection before  marriage." 

Those  who  read  this  statement  will  have 
their  minds  prepared  to  receive  the  further  ap- 
palling statement,  widely  accepted  by  medical 


22      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

authorities,  that  75  per  cent,  to  80  per  cent,  of 
men  have  before  marriage  been  infected  with 
one  form  of  venereal  disease.  Some  of  these 
men  may  seem  to  be  cured,  but  we  have  seen 
how  little  cure  in  this  connection  means. 
Very  sad  cases  are  on  record  of  men  who 
marry  when  apparently  cured,  and  yet  infect 
their  wife.  It  is  therefore  hardly  too  much 
to  say  that  out  of  every  four  men  there  is  only 
one  who  can  marry  without  risk  to  his  bride. 
Such  facts  are  terrible  indeed,  but  the  sooner 
they  are  grasped  the  better  for  the  individual 
and  for  the  race. 

Even  after  marriage  danger  arises  over  and 
over  again  unless  the  husband  abstains  from 
immoral  acts.  In  future  chapters  we  shall 
show  more  fully  what  venereal  disease  means 
to  a  woman. 

We  may  point  out  in  passing  that  prostitu- 
tion and  its  evils  are  largely  a  medical  ques- 
tion, and  must  be  dealt  with  by  medical  men. 
Medical  means  of  doing  away  with  prostitu- 


The  End  of  a  Conspiracy  23 

tion  are  already  used  by  the  Government  to 
make  prostitution  unnecessary  in  the  prisons. 
Prison  doctors  administer  a  medicine  which 
keeps  under  control  a  "human  nature"  of  men 
prisoners. 

It  would  indeed  be  an  extraordinary  thing 
if  the  medical  profession,  which  has  discov- 
ered a  means  of  regulating  every  other  bodily 
function,  should  be  unable  to  tell  men  how  to 
regulate  the  sex  function,  and  to  prevent  that 
excessive  sex  activity  which,  as  they  them- 
selves admit,  is  fatal  to  the  health  of  the  race. 

We  look  to  the  medical  profession,  there- 
fore, to  come  to  the  rescue  of  men  whose  will- 
power fails  them;  to  come  to  the  rescue  of 
wives  whose  life  will  otherwise  be  blighted  by 
disease;  to  come  to  the  rescue  of  children  yet 
unborn,  who,  unless  help  is  forthcoming,  will 
enter  into  a  cruel  inheritance.  A  high  privi- 
lege it  will  be  to  rid  humanity  of  a  most  awful 
scourge. 


A  WOMAN'S  QUESTION 

THE  Prime  Minister  has  been  holding  forth 
on  the  subject  of  the  prevention  of  tuberculo- 
sis. A  most  desirable  thing,  but  it  is  even 
more  desirable  that  the  Prime  Minister  shall 
talk  about  another  and  even  more  terrible 
form  of  disease,  and  that  he  shall  try  to  pre- 
vent it — that  he  shall  strike  at  the  cause  of 
sexual  disease. 

The  cause  of  sexual  disease  is  the  subjec- 
tion of  women.  Therefore  to  destroy  the  one 
we  must  destroy  the  other.  Viewed  in  the 
light  of  that  fact,  Mr.  Asquith's  opposition  to 
votes  for  women  is  seen  to  be  an  overwhelm- 
ing public  danger. 

As  we  have  said,  sexual  disease — or  vene- 
real disease,  as  it  is  commonly  called — is  more 

to  be  dreaded  than  even  tuberculosis.     It  must 

24 


A  Woman's  Question  "  25 

first  be  remembered  that  the  whole  truth  about 
the  effects,  direct  and  indirect,  of  venereal  dis- 
ease is  not  yet  known.  New  discoveries  are 
being  made  every  day,  and  each  discovery  re- 
veals fresh  reason  for  the  belief  that  venereal 
disease  is  humanity's  greatest  scourge. 

As  everybody  knows,  the  more  serious  forms 
of  venereal  disease  are  two,  namely,  syphilis 
and  gonorrhoea.  One  authority  says  that 
among  the  causes  of  death  syphilis  comes 
next  to  tuberculosis  in  frequency.  This  state- 
ment must  be  supplemented  by  others  before 
wre  can  realise  the  full  gravity  of  the  matter. 

Firstly,  owing  to  the  campaign  of  silence  now 
breaking  down,  medical  certificates  for  the 
cause  of  death  are  often  so  arranged  as  to  con- 
ceal the  part  played  by  syphilis,  and  therefore 
the  available  statistics  do  not  fully  represent 
the  facts. 

Secondly,  the  syphilitic  character  of  several 
ailments  formerly  supposed  to  be  non- 
syphilitic  is  now  being  recognised.  Various 


26      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

other  ailments  are  coming  under  suspicion, 
and  this  suspicion  that  they  are  syphilitic  is 
only  too  likely  to  be  established  by  further 
medical  research. 

Thirdly,  syphilis,  by  diminishing  the  power 
of  resistance  of  the  organism,  renders  the  ef- 
fect of  all  illnesses  and  accidents  more  serious. 

There  is  also  this  to  be  noted  in  drawing  the 
comparison  between  tuberculosis  and  syphilis. 
Syphilis  is  a  powerful  predisposing  cause  to 
tuberculosis.  Moreover,  there  is  also  a  form 
of  consumption  which  is  definitely  syphilitic. 
We  may  also  add  that  syphilis  is  now  recog- 
ised  as  being  a  strong  predisposing  cause  to 
cancer. 

Even  in  the  present  imperfect  state  of 
knowledge,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  syphilis,  which 
is  one  only  of  the  venereal  diseases,  ousts  tu- 
berculosis as  the  most  potent  single  cause  of 
physical  degeneracy  and  of  mortality. 

For  women  the  question  of  venereal  disease 
has  a  special  and  a  tragic  interest.  It  strikes 


A  Woman's  Question  27 

at  them  in  their  own  person  and  through  their 
children.  A  woman  infected  by  syphilis  not 
only  suffers  humiliation  and  illness  which  may 
eventually  take  the  most  revolting  form,  but 
is  in  danger  of  becoming  the  mother  of  de- 
formed, diseased,  or  idiot  children.  Why  are 
such  children  born  into  the  world?  women 
have  often  cried  in  despair.  The  answer  is 
— Syphilis!  Miscarriage  is  frequently  caused 
by  the  same  disease.  Indeed  nothing,  as  one 
doctor  says,  is  so  murderous  to  the  offspring 
as  syphilis. 

Rather  different,  though  hardly  less  terrible 
where  women  are  concerned,  is  the  effect  of 
gonorrhoea.  In  future  chapters  we  deal  more 
fully  with  this  matter.  Here  we  may  say 
that  gonorrhoea  is  one  of  the  most  prevalent 
of  all  diseases.  It  is  acquired  before  marriage 
by  75  per  cent,  or  85  per  cent,  of  men,  and  it 
is  very  often  contracted  after  marriage  by 
such  men  as  are  not  entirely  faithful  to  their 
wives.  To  men  the  disease  gives  compara- 


28      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

tively  little  trouble,  and  in  the  old  days  the 
doctors  made  very  light  of  it. 

But  to  women,  owing  to  their  physiological 
structure,  it  is  one  of  the  gravest  of  all  dis- 
eases. A  very  large  number  of  married 
women  are  infected  by  their  husbands  with 
gonorrhoea.  The  common  result  is  sterility, 
which  prevents  the  birth  of  any  child,  or  may 
prevent  the  birth  of  more  than  one  child. 
Race  Suicide! 

Generally  speaking,  the  female  ailments 
which  are  urged  by  some  ignoble  men  as  a  rea- 
son against  the  enfranchisement  of  women 
are  not  due  to  natural  weakness,  but — to 
gonorrhoea.  Women — and  there  are  so  many 
of  them — who  "have  never  been  well  since 
they  married,"  are  victims  of  gonorrhoea. 

An  enormous  percentage  of  the  operations 
upon  women  are  necessitated  by  this  disease, 
which  in  many  cases  so  affects  the  organs  of 
maternity  as  to  necessitate  their  complete 
removal.  Race  Suicide  again. 


A  Woman's  Question  '  29 

These  are  awful  truths,  so  awful  that  the 
woman's  instinct  is  to  keep  them  hidden,  un- 
til she  realises  that  only  by  making  these  truths 
known  can  this  appalling  state  of  affairs  be 
brought  to  an  end. 

Women  have  suffered  too  much  from  the 
conspiracy  of  silence  to  allow  that  conspiracy 
to  last  one  minute  longer.  It  has  been  an 
established  and  admitted  rule  in  the  medical 
profession  to  keep  a  wife  in  ignorance  of  the 
fact  that  she  has  become  the  victim  of  vene- 
real disease.  A  bride  struck  down  by  illness 
within  a  few  days,  or  within  a  few  weeks, 
of  her  wedding  day  is  told  by  her  husband 
and  the  doctor  that  she  is  suffering  from 
appendicitis,  and  under  cover  of  this  lie  her 
sex  organs  are  removed  without  her  knowl- 
edge. Women  whose  husbands  contract 
syphilis,  and  are  in  turn  infected,  are  kept 
in  ignorance  of  this,  and  are  thus  unable  to 
protect  themselves  and  to  do  their  duty  by  the 
future  generation. 


3O      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Here  we  have  the  woman  question  in  per- 
haps its  most  urgent  and  acute  form.  Have 
the  Anti-Suffragist  women  any  idea  of  what 
the  wrongs  of  women  really  are?  We  beg 
them  to  realise  that  so  long  as  the  subjection 
of  women  endures  and  is  confirmed  by  law  and 
custom,  so  long  will  the  race  be  injured  and 
degraded,  and  women  be  victimised. 

Sexual  disease,  we  say  again,  is  due  to  the 
subjection  of  women.  It  is  due,  in  other 
words,  to  the  doctrine  that  woman  is  sex  and 
beyond  that  nothing.  Sometimes  this  doctrine 
is  dressed  up  in  the  saying  that  women  are 
mothers  and  beyond  that  nothing.  What  a 
man  who  says  that  really  means  is  that  women 
are  created  primarily  for  the  sex  gratification 
of  men,  and  secondarily,  for  the  bearing  of 
children  if  he  happens  to  want  them,  but  of  no 
more  children  than  he  wants. 

As  the  result  of  this  belief  the  relation  be- 
tween man  and  woman  has  centred  in  the 
physical.  What  is  more,  the  relation  between 


A  Woman's  Question  -31 

man  and  woman  has  been  that  of  an  owner 
and  his  property — of  a  master  and  his  slave 
— not  the  relation  of  two  equals. 

From  that  evil  has  sprung  another.  The 
man  is  not  satisfied  to  be  in  relation  with  only 
one  slave;  he  must  be  in  relation  with  many. 
That  is  to  say,  sex  promiscuity  has  arisen,  and 
from  that  has  in  its  turn  come  disease. 

And  so  at  the  beginning  of  this  twentieth 
century  in  civilised  Britain  we  have  the  doctors 
breaking  through  the  secrecies  and  traditions 
of  long  years,  and  sounding  the  note  of  alarm. 

/  This  canker  of  venereal  disease  is  eating  away, 
the  vitals  of  the  nation,  and  the  only  cure  is 
Votes  for  Women,  which  is  to  say  the  recogni- 

\  tion  of  the  freedom  and  human  equality  of 
"women. 

V 

The  effect  of  women's  enfranchisement  will, 
where  this  question  of  redeeming  the  race  is 
concerned,  be  manifold.  There  are  three  sets 
of  people  mainly  responsible  for  dealing  with 
the  problem — the  ordinary  man,  the  ordinary 


32      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

woman,  and  the  medical  profession.  The 
medical  profession  has  until  now  viewed  the 
question  of  venereal  disease  chiefly  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  man.  As  woman's  influence 
increases,  her  interests  and  the  interests  of  her 
children — in  a  word,  the  interests  of  the  race — 
begin  to  take  their  due  place  in  medical  consid- 
eration. This  process  will  not  be  complete  un- 
til the  equality  of  women  is  recognised  and  en- 
acted by  the  law.  Then  we  shall  have  doctors 
taking  the  sound,  balanced  view  that  the  moral 
and  physical  health  of  the  race  transcends 
their  "obligations"  to  foolish  individuals  who, 
for  the  sake  of  indulgences  of  which  they  them- 
selves are  ashamed,  would  wreck  the  lives  of 
themselves,  their  wives,  and  their  children. 
We  shall  have  doctors  applying  themselves  to 
the  task  of  helping  men,  if  need  be  by  medi- 
cinal means,  to  live  as  befits  a  highly-evolved 
and  self-respecting  human  being. 

The  outcome  of  enfranchisement  will  be  to 
make  women  hate  more  than  'anything  else 


A  Woman's  Question  33 

in  the  world  the  very  thought  of  selling  them- 
selves into  slavery  as  under  the  conditions  of 
the  present  day  so  many  of  them  do  sell  them- 
selves. The  weapon  of  the  vote  will  enable 
them  to  break  down  existing  barriers  to  honest 
livelihood. 

Upon  men  the  effect  of  women's  enfran- 
chisement will  be  to  teach  them  that  women 
are  their  human  equals,  and  not  the  sub-human 
species  that  so  many  men  now  think  them ;  not 
slaves  to  be  bought  and  soiled  and  degraded 
and  then  cast  away. 

We  know  to  what  bodily  and  spiritual  cor- 
ruption the  subjection  of  women  has  brought 
humanity.  Let  us  now  see  to  what  cleanness 
and  nobility  we  can  arrive  through  her  eman- 
cipation ! 


HOW  TO  CURE  THE  GREAT 
PESTILENCE 

THE  re-education  of  men  upon  sexual  matters 
is  one  of  the  most  urgent  needs  of  the  day. 
At  present  their  minds  are  chokeful  of  igno- 
rant and  unclean  superstition  as  to  their  own 
sex  nature,  and  they  entertain  beliefs  on  this 
question  which  are  directly  contrary  to  medi-^ 
cal  opinion,  and  produce  the  most  deplorable 
results  so  far  as  themselves,  women,  and  the 
race  are  concerned.  Although  doctors  affirm 
that  a  pure  and  continent  life  is  never  the 
cause  of  disease,  whereas  immorality  is  the 
greatest  of  all  foes  to  health,  still  the  opposite 
theory  is  maintained  by  millions  of  men. 

It  is  because  of  men's  ignorance  and  super- 
stition that  prostitution  is  so  widely  thought 
to  be  inevitable.  Immoral  intercourse  with 
prostitutes  men  are  pleased  to  term  "the  ex- 

34 


How  to  Cure  the  Great  Pestilence    '35 

ercise  of  their  natural  functions/'  and  now 
that  a  determined  crusade  is  being  waged 
against  prostitution,  those  who  wage  that  cru- 
sade are  accused  of  defying  Nature.  Nature, 
indeed!  As  though  Nature  had  not  decreed 
a  punishment  for  sexual  immorality  such  as 
she  imposes  in  respect  of  no  other  sin! 

The  horrible  disease  against  which  doctors 
are  crying  out  at  the  present  day  is  the  direct 
outcome  of  prostitution,  which  must  hencefor- 
ward be  classed  with  the  other  unnatural  vices. 

What  every  woman  believes,  who  is  not  dis- 
eased or  else  morally  corrupted  by  acute  pov- 
erty on  the  one  hand  or  excessive  luxury  and 
irresponsibility  on  the  other,  is  this :  sexual  in- 
tercourse where  there  exists  no  bond  of  love 
and  spiritual  sympathy  is  beneath  human 
dignity.  That  such  intercourse  is  forbidden 
by  Nature  herself,  and  more  strictly  forbidden 
and  more  harshly  punished  than  any  other  sin, 
we  have  already  said.  Until  men  in  general 
accept  the  views  on  the  sex  question  held  by 


36      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

all  normal  women,  and  until  they  live  as  cleanly 
as  normal  women  do,  the  race  will  be  poisoned, 
as  it  is  to-day,  by  foul  disease. 

Very  reluctant  are  men  to  receive  and  act 
upon  this  truth.  Always  they  want  to  sin  and 
escape  the  consequences.  To  persist  in  sexual 
immorality  and  to  remain  free  from  sexual 
disease  is  their  impossible  ideal.  Even  now, 
when  the  health  and  sanity  of  our  race  are  at 
stake,  men  are  trifling  with  a  great  peril,  and 
are  pretending  that  immorality  can  be  made 
safe. 

In  the  first  place,  they  proclaim  that  they 
have  found  at  last  the  cure  for  which  they 
have  been  seeking  throughout  the  centuries. 
A  cure  for  sexual  disease,  which  is  of  all  dis- 
eases the  most  incurable! — as  though  Nature 
had  not  willed  that  there  should  be  no  way  of 
escape  from  this  scourge  except  one,  and  that 
one  way  the  way  of  purity.  This  boasted  new 
cure  is  called  Salvarsan  or  606,  and  men  are 
speaking  of  this  supposed  remedy  as  though 


How  to  Cure  the  Great  Pestilence   '37 

its  discovery  were  a  licence  to  them  to  go  and 
sin  in  safety. 

But  what  is  the  truth  of  the  matter?  This 
cure  is  by  no  means  proved  to  be  a  cure.  The 
doctors  are  disagreeing  about  it,  and  with  the 
best  will  in  the  world  to  believe  that  Salvarsan 
will  cure  syphilis,  they  cannot  shut  their  eyes 
to  the  very  ominous  facts  which  manifest 
themselves  in  connection  with  the  use  of  this 
remedy.  Quite  recently  an  inquest  was  held 
in  London  upon  a  man  of  forty-two,  who  died 
after  an  injection  of  Salvarsan.  Dr.  Willcox, 
the  expert  in  poisons,  who  was  called  to  give 
evidence,  expressed  the  opinion  that  death  was 
due  to  delayed  poisoning  caused  by  the  arsenic 
in  the  injection.  But  a  little  while  ago,  he 
said,  a  woman  died  in  a  similar  way.  A 
French  medical  expert,  M.  Hallopeau,  in  a 
treatise  on  the  eradication  of  syphilis,  says: 

"Salvarsan  is  not  without  serious  draw- 
backs. In  the  first  place,  its  efHcacy  is  far 
from  being  absolute.  In  a  number  of  cases, 


38      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil- 

which  vary  according  to  the  statistics  from 
one-tenth  to  a  quarter,  the  disease  is  not  cured, 
and  at  the  end  of  a  few  months  new  symptoms 
appear.  In  the  second  place,  the  remedy  is 
not  harmless  when  administered,  for  one  has 
seen  up  to  the  present  more  than  a  hundred 
cases  of  death  admittedly  due  to  its  action, 
and  this  figure  must  necessarily  be  smaller 
than  the  number  of  deaths  that  actually  occur, 
for  these  intimate  dramas  have  only  two  wit- 
nesses— the  patient  and  the  doctor,  and  if  the 
patient  disappears  it  is  so  much  to  the  doctor's 
interest  to  be  silent  that  he  must  almost  neces- 
sarily succumb  to  this  temptation." 

Dr.  Marshall,  surgeon  to  the  British  Skin 
Hospital,  at  a  conference  held  some  months 
ago,  refused  to  admit  that  the  curative  power 
of  Salvarsan  has  been  proved,  because  as  he 
said,  "In  such  a  disease  as  syphilis  the  value 
of  a  new  drug  cannot  be  estimated  till  it  has 
been  tried  for  at  least  ten  years.  The  chief 
tests  of  the  efficacy  of  such  a  drug  are  its 


How  to  Cure  the  Great  Pestilence  '39 

powers  in  preventing  tertiary  or  parasyphi- 
litic  manifestations  and  the  transmission  of 
disease  to  the  offspring.  This  remedy,"  added 
Dr.  Marshall,  "appears  to  be  liable  to  cause 
severe  toxic  effects,  sometimes  ending  fatally. 
No  doubt  many  of  the  deaths  after  Salvarsan 
were  due  to  faulty  technique  and  like  causes, 
but  a  certain  number  are  difficult  to  explain, 
except  by  arsenical  poisoning." 

These  opinions  concerning  Salvarsan  are 
entertained  by  many  other  medical  authorities  ; 
even  the  discoverer  of  Salvarsan,  Dr.  Ehrliels, 
now  claims  no  more  for  it  than  that  it  is  "a  valu- 
able adjunct  to  treatment."  It  is  obvious, 
even  to  the  lay  mind,  that  a  remedy  whose  ad- 
vocates allege  that  it  can  swiftly  destroy  one 
of  the  most  virulent  and  prolonged  of  mala- 
dies, must  itself  be  a  dangerous  substance — 
a  veritable  two-edged  sword.  In  fact  we  are 
brought  back  again  to  the  obvious  truth  that 
the  only  certain  cure  of  sexual  disease  is  pre- 
vention. 


40      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

The  next  method  by  which  men  hope  to  se- 
cure immunity  from  the  consequences  of  ill- 
doing  is  that  of  the  State  regulation  and 
recognition  of  vice.  Some  would  disguise  this 
system  by  calling  it  by  another  name.  But  one 
man,  at  any  rate,  has  had  the  courage  of  his 
convictions.  He  is  Major  French,  of  the 
Royal  Army  Medical  Corps.  Whether  or  not 
as  a  representative  of  the  Government  is  as 
yet  unascertained,  he  read  a  paper  before  the 
International  Medical  Congress.  He  recom- 
mends that  the  State  should  assume  "the  effec- 
tual control  of  openly-practised  prostitution 
by  the  localisation  of  irreclaimable  women  into 
certain  areas  or  streets."  These  women 
would  be  periodically  inspected,  perhaps  once 
or  twice  a  week,  in  order  to  see  whether  they 
were  diseased,  and  if  diseased  they  would  be 
isolated  and  treated,  and  then  men  would  again 
begin  the  task  of  making  them  diseased. 

Anticipating  the  objection  that  the  main- 
tenance and  medical  treatment  of  these  women 


How  to  Cure  the  Great  Pestilence  '  41 

victims  of  immorality  would  involve  a  very 
heavy  charge  upon  the  public  funds,  Major 
French  makes  the  extraordinary  and  menda- 
cious statement  that  prolonged  treatment  is 
only  necessary  in  the  case  of  syphilis,  and  that 
one  or  two  months'  adequate  treatment  and 
isolation  would  be  sufficient  in  the  case  of  gon- 
orrhoea. Considering  that  persons  apparently 
cured  of  gonorrhoea  have  three  or  four  years 
later  been  known  to  infect  another  healthy  per- 
son, the  dangerous  character  of  Major  French's 
false  statement  will  be  seen. 

There  is,  according  to  Major  French's 
scheme,  to  be  no  compulsory  medical  inspec- 
tion of  men,  because,  he  says,  "men  infected 
with  venereal  disease  are  not  so  dangerous  as 
women,  because  a  woman  practising  prostitu- 
tion usually  associates  with  numerous  men,  and 
a  man  could  not  and  does  not  associate  with 
a  like  number  of  women." 

We  maintain  that,  on  the  contrary,  a  dis- 
eased man  is  far  more  dangerous  than  a  dis- 


42      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

eased  prostitute,  because  every  man  is  free  to 
abstain,  and  knowing  the  dangers  involved  he 
is  a  fool  if  he  does  not  abstain,  from  inter- 
course with  a  prostitute,  whereas  the  man  who 
is  diseased  can,  and  in  innumerable  cases  does, 
communicate  his  disease  to  his  unsuspecting 
wife  and  to  his  children. 

The  plea  for  State  regulation  of  vice  is,  ac- 
cording to  Major  French,  based  on  "the  car- 
dinal fact  that  prostitution  has  always  existed, 
and  unfortunately  must  continue  to  do  so  for 
1  all  time."  What  this  means,  put  into  other 
words,  is  that  men  will  always  sacrifice  their 
own  self-respect,  and  the  health  of  their  wife 
and  family,  on  the  altar  of  immorality.  We 
think  better  of  men  than  this,  provided  that  the 
necessary  work  of  education  and  reform  is 
done  amongst  them.  Major  French  must 
really  speak  for  himself,  and  not  for  other 
men! 

It  is  contended  that  since  the  system  of 
regulated  vice  was  established  in  connection 


How  to  Cure  the  Great  Pestilence  '  43 

with  the  Indian  Army  the  percentage  of  the 
cases  of  syphilis  in  that  army  has  been  reduced. 
Major  French  in  saying  this  ignores  the  fact 
that  of  late  years  those  at  the  head  of  the 
Indian  Army  have  enjoined  upon  the  soldiers 
the  possibility  and  the  necessity,  from  the 
health  point  of  view,  of  a  moral  life.  Thus 
Lord  Kitchener  issued  a  memorandum  to 
every  soldier,  in  which  he  said :  "It  is  neces- 
sary that  those  who  are  serving  their  country 
in  India  should  exert  to  the  utmost  those 
powers  of  self-restraint  with  which  every  man 
is  provided,  in  order  that  he  may  exercise  a 
proper  control  over  his  appetites." 

Lord  Kitchener  further  declared  "that  every 
man  can  by  self-control  restrain  the  indul- 
gence of  those  imprudent  and  reckless  im- 
pulses that  so  often  lead  men  astray."  Sir 
George  White  and  Lord  Wolseley  have  issued 
statements  to  soldiers  on  the  same  lines.  The 
soldiers  who  become  infected  by  disease  are 
punished  by  loss  of  promotion,  forfeiture  of 


44      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

first-class  pay,  and  in  other  ways,  and  this  has 
obviously  a  salutary  effect. 

It  is  to  be  noticed,  too,  that  a  decline  in 
venereal  disease  has  also  taken  place  in  the 
Home  Army,  although  there  is  no  State  regu- 
lation of  vice  where  the  Home  Army  is  con- 
cerned. 

Another  point  to  be  noticed  is  that,  in  spite 
of  the  regulation  of  vice  in  Berlin,  a  high 
medical  authority  is  of  the  opinion  that  in  that 
city  every  man  who  reaches  the  age  of  thirty 
has,  on  an  average,  had  gonorrhoea  twice,  and 
every  fourth  or  fifth  man  has  had  syphilis! 
State  regulation  of  vice  has  been  tried  in  many 
countries,  and  always  it  has  failed — its  failure 
being  now  almost  universally  admitted  by 
medical  men. 

But  it  is  not  the  opinion  of  medical  men  or 
the  opinion  of  women  which  will  necessarily 
prevail,  if  things  are  left  to  take  their  course, 
and  there  is  danger  that  an  attempt  may  be 
made,  under  cover  of  what  will  be  called  "noti- 


How  to  Cure  the  Great  Pestilence  '45 

fication  of  disease,"  to  establish  some  form  of 
State  regulation  of  vice  and  State  control  of 
women  of  a  certain  class. 

Against  any  such  system  women  will  fight 
to  the  very  death.  No  woman-slavery  of  that 
kind  can  be  tolerated  at  this  time  of  day.  If 
men  venture  to  re-establish  in  this  country  a 
system  according  to  which  certain  women  will 
be  segregated,  controlled,  and  medically  ex- 
amined for  the  purposes  of  vice,  that  will  mean 
the  establishment  of  a  sex  war.  It  will  mean 
that  women  in  general,  not  only  for  the  sake 
of  the  slave  women  but  for  their  own  sake,  will 
regard  men  as  contemptible  and  degraded  be- 
ings. 

Even  though,  by  the  degradation  of  a  slave 
class  of  women,  men  could  keep  their  bodies 
clean,  they  could  not  keep  their  minds  clean, 
and  the  modern  woman,  emancipated  as  she 
already  is  spiritually,  and  as  she  soon  will  be 
politically,  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  men 
who  are  foul  in  mind. 


46      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

The  great  pestilence,  this  sexual  disease 
which  is  ravaging  the  community,  makes  a 
problem  that  has  got  to  be  solved.  And  now 
that  we  all  know  what  is  wrong,  none  of  us 
can  rest  until  it  is  put  right.  But  the  quack- 
ery of  regulated  vice  must  be  put  aside  once 
and  for  all.  Also,  while  medical  treatment 
will,  and  ought  to  be,  fully  available  to  those 
diseased,  there  can  be  no  reliance  upon  reme- 
dies as  a  substitute  for  clean  living. 

The  real  cure  of  the  great  plague  is  a  two- 
fold one — Votes  for  Women,  which  will  give 
to  women  more  self-reliance  and  a  stronger 
economic  position,  and  chastity  for  men. 


THE  EXTENT  OF  THE  EVIL 

As  might  be  expected,  the  statements  that  we 
make  as  to  sexual  disease  and  its  causes  evoke 
a  good  deal  of  comment  on  the  part  of  men. 
Some  men  say  that  they  completely  endorse 
our  statements  of  fact,  and  that  they  agree 
with  us  that  Votes  for  Women  and  chastity 
for  men  are  the  sole  cures  for  sexual  disease. 
Other  men  offer  criticism. 

These  critics  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  our 
statements  as  to  the  prevalence  of  sexual  dis- 
ease amongst  men  are  exaggerated.  In  the 
second  place,  they  say  that  the  reason  of  men's 
vice  is  an  economic  one,  and  that  if  men  could 
afford  to  marry  they  would  no  longer  have 
intercourse  with  prostitutes.  It  is,  of  course, 
principally  Socialist  men  who  adopt  this  sec- 
ond line  of  argument. 

There  is  a  complete  answer  to  both  these  ob- 
47 


48      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

j actions.  Firstly,  as  to  the  denial  of  our  as- 
sertion that  75  per  cent,  to  80  per  cent,  of  men 
contract  gonorrhoea.  Men's  favourite  method 
of  arguing  against  women  is  to  deny  their 
statements  of  fact.  But  as  it  happens,  the  as- 
sertion in  question  is  not  made  upon  our  own 
authority,  but  upon  that  of  medical  men. 

This  is  what  great  medical  authorities  say 
as  to  the  percentage  of  men  who  contract  gon- 
orrhoea1— the  malady  which  is  so  dangerous 
to  the  wives,  who  in  thousands  are  infected  by 
a  diseased  husband. 

Noeggerath  says  that  in  New  York,  out  of 
1000  married  men,  800  have  had  gonorrhoea, 
and  that  90  per  cent,  of  these  have  not  been 
healed  and  can  infect  their  wives. 

Ricord  also  says  that  80  per  cent,  of  men 
contract  gonorrhoea,  and  says  further: 
"When  anyone  has  once  acquired  gonorrhoea 
God  only  knows  when  he  will  get  well  again." 

Neisser,  who  discovered  the  gonococcus, 
says:  "The  statement  that  of  the  adult  male 


The  Extent  of  the  Evil  49 

population  inhabiting  large  towns,  only  an  in- 
significant  proportion  escapes  gonorrhceal  in- 
fection is  not  at  all  exaggerated" 

Dr.  A.  Prince  Morrow,  author  of  Social 
Diseases  and  Marriage,  says:  "Gonorrhoea 
is  the  most  widespread  and  universal  of  all  dis- 
eases in  the  adult  male  population,  embracing 
75  per  cent,  or  more/' 

Taylor,  in  his  book  on  venereal  diseases, 
says :  "We  are  certainly  warranted  in  assert- 
ing that  gonorrhoea,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  one 
of  the  most  formidable  and  far-reaching  in- 
fections by  which  the  human  race  is  attacked." 

Finger,  the  great  German  authority  on 
gonorrhoea,  says:  "Gonorrhoea  of  the  male 
urethra  is  probably  the  most  frequent  disease 
with  which  the  practical  physician  has  to  deal. 
With  it  he  usually  begins  his  early  practice, 
and  until  the  end  it  causes  him  many  anxious 
hours.  Frequent  as  is  the  disease,  it  is  equally 
1  ungrateful  as  regards  a  positive  and  radical 


cure." 


50      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Dr.  Douglas  White,  M.D.,  and  Dr.  C.  H. 
Melville,  of  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps, 
who  jointly  prepared  a  paper  on  venereal  dis- 
ease read  at  the  Annual  Congress  of  the  Royal 
Institute  of  Public  Health,  said:  "The  ma- 
jority of  all  young  men  get  gonorrhoea  before 
the  age  of  thirty." 

These  statements  of  fact  may  be  supple- 
mented by  two  further  statements.  One  is 
that,  as  James  Foster  Scott,  M.D.,*  expresses 
it,  "In  every  case  where  a  woman  is  infected 
with  gonorrhoea,  she  is  in  danger  not  only  of 
being  rendered  a  permanent  invalid  and  bar- 
ren, but  also  of  losing  her  life  from  peritonitis 
and  septicaemia.7'  In  mild  cases  a  woman 
suffers  from  the  "poor  health"  that  is  falsely 
supposed  to  be  Nature's  gift  to  women.  In 
severe  cases  the  sex  organs  have  to  be  removed 
by  the  surgeon's  knife. 

Dr.    Prince    Morrow   says:     "All   modern 

*  Scott:    "The  Sexual  Instinct,"  published  by  E.  B.  Treat 
&  Co.,  N.  Y. 


Extent  of  the  Evil  51 

writers  oil  the  diseases  of  women  recognise 
that  gonorrhoea  is  the  chief  determining  cause 
of  the  inflammatory  diseases  peculiar  to 


women/' 


A  further  point  to  be  noticed  is  that  it  is 
to  all  intents  and  purposes  impossible  for 
doctors  to  give  a  guarantee  of  cure,  so  that  a 
man  may  marry  and  infect  his  wife,  although 
he  was  apparently  cured  at  the  time  of  the 
marriage. 

Dr.  Prince  Morrow  shows  that  a  gonor- 
rhoea which  appears  to  be  cured  may  really  be 
lying  latent,  and  he  says :  "The  experience  of 
all  gynaecologists  is  concurrent  in  the  conclu- 
sion that  infection  of  the  wife  by  latent  gonor- 
rhoea in  the  husband  is  the  most  prolific  source 
of  illness  in  married  women,  often  leading  to 
invalidism,  unsexing  (by  surgical  operation), 
or  death." 

Taylor  says  that  in  very  many  cases  the 
infection  remains  dormant,  latent,  and  un- 
recognised, and  these  cases  may  drag  on  for 


52      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

one  or  more,  and  even  five,  ten,  or  twenty 
years  without  giving  any  indication  of  lurking 
trouble,  when  for  some  reason  or  other  the 
disease  may  break  out  again.  The  result,  of 
course,  is  that  the  wife  of  the  man  so  diseased 
becomes  infected.  Other  cases  are  seen,  says 
James  Foster  Scott,  that  defy  all  measures  of 
treatment. 

Price,  an  American  authority  on  the  ques- 
tion at  issue,  says  that  out  of  1000  abdominal 
operations  on  women,  950 — all  save  50! — 
were  the  result  of  conditions  due  to  gonor- 
rhoea. 

These  few  quotations  from  great  authori- 
ties are  more  than  enough  to  establish  our  con- 
tention that  75  per  cent,  to  80  per  cent,  of  men 
acquire  gonorrhoea;  moreover,  they  are  a 
warning  to  men  to  abstain  from  vice  and  a 
warning  to  women  of  the  grave  danger  of  mar- 
riage so  long  as  the  moral  standards  of  men 
continue  to  be  lower  than  their  own. 

And  now  to  reply  to  the  statement  of  our 


The  Extent  of  the  Evil  '53 

critics  who  say  that  the  reason  of  sexual  vice 
is  an  economic  one,  and  that  if  all  men  could 
afford  to  marry,  prostitution  would  disappear. 
That  this  contention  is  unfounded  is  proved 
by  these  facts.  Firstly,  that  rich  men,  who 
can  perfectly  well  afford  to  marry,  are  quite 
as  immoral  as  poorer  men.  Secondly,  that 
married  men  as  well  as  unmarried  men  have 
intercourse  with  prostitutes. 

The  problem  of  vice  is  certainly  an  eco- 
nomic one  in  this  sense,  that  where  women  are 
economically  dependent  upon  men,  they  more 
readily  become  the  victims  of  vice.  It  should 
be  noticed  that  the  man's  instinctive  endeavour 
is  to  keep  the  woman  in  a  state  of  economic  de- 
pendence. This  desire  to  keep  women  in 
economic  subjection  to  themselves — to  have 
women,  as  it  were,  at  their  mercy — is  at  the 
root  of  men's  opposition  to  the  industrial  and 
professional  employment  of  women. 

If  a  woman  can  earn  an  adequate  living  by 
the  work  of  her  hand  or  brain,  then  it  will  be 


54      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

much  harder  to  compel  her  to  earn  her  living 
by  selling  her  sex. 

Here  we  have  the  reason  why  a  man-made 
Socialism  is  not  less  dangerous  to  women  than 
man-made  Capitalism.  So  long  as  men  have 
the  monopoly  of  political  power,  it  will  be  im- 
possible to  restrain  their  impulse  to  keep 
women  in  economic  dependence  and  so  sexu- 
ally subservient.  In  this  sense,  as  we  have 
said,  the  question  of  White  Slavery  is  an  eco- 
nomic one. 

But  as  we  have  also  said,  and  say  again, 
sexual  vice  is  not  caused  by  the  poverty  of  men, 
because  the  ranks  of  the  vicious  are  recruited 
from  the  ranks  of  the  rich  men,  the  poor  men, 
and  the  men  of  moderate  means.  As  we  have 
further  said,  and  now  repeat,  marriage  does 
not  deter  men  from  vicious  courses,  because 
married  men  as  well  as  unmarried  men  de- 
scend to  such  courses. 

The  fact  is  that  the  sex  instinct  of  these 
men  has  become  so  perverted  and  corrupted 


The  Extent  of  the  Evil  .  55 

that  intercourse  with  virtuous  women  does  not 
content  them.  They  crave  for  intercourse 
with  women  whom  they  feel  no  obligation  to 
respect.  They  want  to  resort  to  practices 
which  a  wife  would  not  tolerate.  Lewdness 
and  obscenity  is  what  these  men  ask  for,  and 
what  they  get  in  houses  of  ill-fame.  Marriage 
does  not  "satisfy"  them.  They  fly  to  women 
who  will  not  resent  foul  words  and  acts,  and 
will  even  permit  unnatural  abuse  of  the  sex 
function. 

The  facts  brought  out  by  the  prosecution  in 
the  Piccadilly  Flat  Case,  scanty  though  these 
facts  were,  show  how  matters  stand.  No 
wonder  decent  women  are  loth  to  marry,  know- 
ing what  they  know  to-day! 

And  there  is  another  infamous  thing  to  be 
told.  The  men,  married  and  unmarried,  who 
visit  bad  houses  are  not  content  to  degrade 
women  of  full  age  and  mature  physical  devel- 
opment. They  want  young  girls,  and,  if  they 
can  get  them,  virgins.  Bernard  Shaw,  in  his 


56      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

preface  to  Three  Plays  by  Brieux,  cites 
Brieux's  contention,  and  himself  seems  to  en- 
dorse it,  that  no  man  likes  to  face  the  respon- 
sibility of  tempting  a  girl  to  her  first  step  from 
the  beaten  path.  Mr.  Shaw  is  behind  the 
times,  for  at  the  present  day  it  is,  as  the  White 
Slaves  can  tell  us,  "a  perfect  craze  with  men" 
to  have  intercourse  with  the  youngest  possible 
girl,  and  they  are  especially  eager  to  be  the 
first  to  ruin  her. 

Where  is  the  father  instinct  which  should 
be  prompting  every  man  to  defend  and  not  to 
destroy  youth  and  purity? 

The  fact  is  that  it  is  no  longer  any  use  for 
men  to  try  to  preserve  the  illusions  of  the  vir- 
tuous woman  as  to  what  goes  on  in  the  under- 
world. This  men  must  now  accept.  A 
double  standard  of  morality  means  that  they 
will  be  more  and  more  cast  out  by  self-respect- 
ing women.  Until  men  accept  the  same  moral 
standard  as  women,  how  can  it  be  said  that 
they  are  fit  companions  for  them? 


The  Extent  of  the  Evil  57 

The  virtuous  woman  has  often  been  con- 
demned for  shrinking  from  her  "fallen  sister" 
and  holding  out  the  hand  of  friendship  to  the 
fallen  man.  Not  much  longer  will  women 
continue  to  deserve  that  reproach,  because  they 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  men  are  not 
worthy  to  associate  with  them  who  are  not  of 
clean  mind  and  of  clean  life. 


CHASTITY  AND  THE  HEALTH 
OF  MEN 

IN  urging  that  Votes  for  Women  and  chastity 
for  men  are  the  double  cure  for  the  sexual 
disease  that  is  destroying  individuals  and  the 
race,  we  are  met  by  the  excuse  that  chastity 
for  men  is  dangerous  to  their  health,  and  that 
immorality  is  necessary  to  the  preservation  of 
their  health. 

This  excuse  is  in  direct  conflict  with  the 
highest  medical  opinion. 

Medical  testimony  is  that  immorality  not 
only  soils  and  debilitates  a  man's  body,  but 
also  contaminates  his  mind.  Intractable  to 
cure  as  is  the  bodily  disease  caused  by  im- 
morality, the  brain  stains  which  it  produces 
are  even  more  difficult  to  wash  away. 

But  since  so  many  men  rank  the  body 
higher  than  the  mind,  it  is  above  all  things 

58 


Chastity  and  the  Health  of  Men    *  59 

important  to  make  them  understand  that  the 
physical  well-being  which  they  think,  or  pre- 
tend to  think,  that  they  are  achieving  by  im- 
morality is  actually  being  destroyed. 

That  immorality  causes  bodily  weakness  as 
well  as  actual  disease  is  obvious,  because  the 
sexual  act  involves  a  very  great  expenditure 
of  a  man's  energy — energy  which  can,  if  it 
is  not  expended  in  that  way,  be  transmuted 
and  expended  in  other  ways,  either  physical 
or  mental. 

In  support  of  our  contention  we  may  point 
out  that  when  athletes  are  in  training  sexual 
intercourse,  even  in  the  legitimate  relation  of 
marriage  and  in  moderation,  has  to  be  com- 
pletely avoided.  Considering  that  a  man  goes 
into  training  with  a  view  to  getting  himself 
into  a  perfect  physical  condition,  the  fact  to 
which  we  have  referred  is  of  the  very  greatest 
significance. 

And  now  we  will  give,  one  after  another, 
quotations  from  medical  authorities  showing 


60      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

the  desirability,  from  the  point  of  view  of  men's 
health,  of  an  equal  moral  standard  for  men 
and  women. 

The  matter  is  clearly  expressed  in  the  fol- 
lowing statement  by  the  late  William  Acton, 
M.R.C.S.: 

"The  argument  in  favour  of  incontinence 
deserves  special  notice,  as  it  purports  to  be 
founded  on  physiology.  I  have  been  con- 
sulted by  persons  who  feared,  or  who  pro- 
fessed to  fear,  that  if  the  organs  were  not 
regularly  exercised  they  would  become  atro- 
phied, or  that  in  some  way  impotence  might 
be  the  result  of  chastity.  There  exists  no 
greater  error  than  this,  or  one  more  opposed 
to  physiological  truth.  I  may  state  that  I 
have,  after  many  years  of  experience,  never 
seen  an  instance  of  atrophy  of  the  generative 
organs  from  this  cause.  I  have  indeed  met 
with  the  complaint :  but  in  what  class  of  cases 
does  it  occur?  It  arises  in  all  instances  from 
the  exactly  opposite  cause — early  abuse;  the 


Chastity  and  the  Health  of  Men  -    61 

organs  become  worn  out,  and  hence  atrophy 
arises.  Every  year  of  voluntary  chastity  ren- 
ders the  task  easier  by  the  mere  force  of  habit." 

Sir  T.  C  Allbutt,  K.C.B.,  M.D.,  Regius 
Professor  of  Physics,  Cambridge,  says :  "Con- 
tinence, so  far  from  being  harmful,  is  not 
harmful  at  any  age/' 

John  Kellock  Barton,  M.D.,  says:  "Con- 
tinence is  possible,  and  not  only  compatible 
with  but  conducive  to  health." 

Lionel  S.  Beale  says : 

"No  sufficient  valid  objections  have  been  es- 
tablished upon  reasonable  grounds  or  upon 
facts  of  physiology  and  health  to  living,  nay, 
to  passing  the  whole  life  in  a  state  of  celibacy. 
The  argument  that  if  marriage  cannot,  for  va- 
rious reasons,  be  carried  out,  it  is  nevertheless 
necessary  upon  physiological  grounds  that  a 
substitute  of  some  kind  should  be  found  is  al- 
together erroneous,  and  without  foundation." 

Clement  Dukes,  M.D.,  Physician  of  Rugby 
School,  says: 


62       Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

"It  is  a  frequent  observation  instilled  into 
the  young  at  all  ages:  'I  am  told  it  is  very 
bad  for  me  to  be  continent ;  my  health  will  suf- 
fer from  it/  No  greater  lie  was  ever  invented. 
It  is  simply  a  base  invention  to  cover  sin,  and 
has  no  foundation  in  fact." 

Very  important  are  the  words  of  G.  M. 
Humphrey,  M.D.,  Professor  of  Surgery  at  the 
University  of  Cambridge.  He  says : 

"There  are  no  organs  so  much  under  control 
as  those  of  generation.  Their  functions  are 
neither  directly  nor  indirectly  in  the  least  es- 
sential to  life — scarcely  even  to  the  well-being 
of  the  body.  The  functions  of  the  testicle,  like 
those  of  the  mammary  gland  and  the  uterus, 
may  be  suspended  for  a  long  period,  possibly 
for  life;  and  yet  its  structure  may  be  sound, 
and  capable  of  being  roused  into  activ- 
ity." 

Says  the  great  surgeon,  Bryant : 

"Unlike  other  glands,  the  testicle  does  not 
waste  or  atrophy  for  want  of  use,  the  physical 


Chastity  and  the  Health  of  Men  -    63 

parts  of  man's  nature  being  accurately  adapted 
to  the  necessities  of  his  position,  and  to  his 
moral  being." 

The  late  Sir  James  Paget,  Sergeant-Sur- 
geon-Extraordinary to  the  late  Queen 
Victoria,  Consulting  Surgeon  to  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital,  says:  "Chastity  does  no 
harm  to  mind  or  body;  its  discipline  is  excel- 
lent." 

Sir  Dyce  Duckworth,  M.D.,  Honorary  Phy- 
sician to  the  King,  Treasurer  and  Representa- 
tive on  the  General  Medical  Council  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians,  says :  "The  sex- 
ual organs  can  lie  dormant  for  years,  can  be 
left  alone,  out  of  consideration,  and  forgotten, 
so  to  speak,  until  the  time  comes  for  matri- 
mony." 

Sir  Andrew  Clarke  said :  "Continence  does 
not  harm,  does  not  interfere  with  development, 
elevates  the  whole  nature,  increases  energy, 
and  sharpens  insight." 

The  opinion  of  Sir  W.  R.  Cowers,  M.D., 


64      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

F.R.S.,  Lecturer  of  the  Medical  Society  of 
London,  is  expressed  as  follows : 

"The  opinions  which  on  grounds  falsely 
called  'physiological'  suggest  or  permit  un- 
chastity  are  terribly  prevalent  among  young 
men,  but  they  are  absolutely  false.  I  assert 
that  no  man  ever  yet  was  in  the  slightest  de- 
gree or  way  the  worse  for  continence  or  the 
better  for  incontinence." 

The  lower  moral  standard  of  men  has  al- 
ways been  a  cause  of  offence  to  women,  and 
men  have  sought  to  silence  women's  condem- 
nation by  assuring  them  that  chastity  involves 
not  only  injury  to  the  health  of  men  (with  this 
point  we  have  dealt),  but  also  very  great  phys- 
ical distress.  Upon  this  matter  also  the 
doctors  have  pronounced,  and  in  a  sense  de- 
structive of  men's  pretensions. 

The  doctors  inform  us  that  the  immorality 
to  which  men  resort  on  the  pretext  of  reliev- 
ing physical  distress  is,  on  the  contrary,  the 
very  cause  of  that  distress. 


Chastity  and  the  Health  of  Men    -  65 

"Fallen  men/'  says  James  Foster  Scott, 
M.D.,  "by  continual  stimulation  of  their  sex- 
ual passions  with  erotic  thoughts,  sensual  con- 
versation and  literature,  and  by  the  rehearsal 
of  lewd  stories,  produce  in  themselves  and  in 
others  who  fall  under  their  noxious  influence 
an  uncontrollable  passion."  Says  the  same  au- 
thority: "Intercourse  with  different  women 
is  well  known  morbidly  to  increase  desire/' 

Another  important  statement  made  by  Dr. 
Scott  is  this : 

"The  proper  subjugation  of  the  sexual  im- 
pulses and  the  conservation  of  the  complex 
seminal  fluid,  with  its  wonderfully  invigorat- 
ing influence,  develop  all  that  is  best  and  no- 
blest in  men." 

"It  is  incontinent  men,"  says  W.  J.  Jacob- 
son,  Surgeon,  Guy's  Hospital,  "who  are  sub- 
ject to  this  constant  irritability  of  the  sexual 
organs,  and  it  is  they  who,  from  unshunned 
excitement,  must  suffer  from  an  excess  of  semi- 
nal secretions  and  its  results.  On  the  other 


66      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

hand,  it  is  the  strictly  continent  men  who  keep 
themselves  healthily  occupied  in  mind  and 
body,  men  who,  when  attacked  by  imperious 
sexual  desire,  simply  sally  out  and  seek  in  ex- 
ercise a  change  of  surroundings;  to  such  as 
these  the  secretion  of  semen  is  soon  only  suffi- 
cient to  be  easily  got  rid  of  by  an  involuntary 
emission  during  sleep  once  or  twice  a  month,  a 
state  of  things  which  is  perfectly  natural/7 

Here  we  have  stated  the  fact  that  Nature 
has  supplied  an  innocent  means  of  relief 
for  men,  upon  which  they  ought  to  depend 
instead  of  polluting  the  bodies  of  the  white 
slaves. 

A  further  statement  on  this  point  we  take 
from  the  writings  of  James  Foster  Scott,  M.D. 
and  C.M.  of  Edinburgh  University,  and  late 
Obstetrician  to  Columbia  Hospital  for  Women 
in  Washington.  He  says: 

"Nocturnal  emissions  of  semen  occur  occa- 
sionally in  all  normal  men  as  desirable  physio- 
logical events  which  give  convincing  proof  of 


Chastity  and  the  Health  of  Men'     67 

virility.  Silly  men  who  gain  their  informa- 
tion from  the  evil  publications  of  charlatans 
who  are  wholly  mercenary  in  their  aims, 
wrongly  attribute  these  losses  to  some  mischief 
in  the  generative  functions.  The  emissions 
occur  with  varying  frequency  in  different  men, 
and  in  the  same  man  at  different  times.  If  . 
one  takes  little  exercise,  oversleeps,  lives  on  a 
rich  diet,  uses  tea,  coffee,  or  tobacco  to  excess, 
and  stimulates  his  mind  with  erotic  fancies  and 
pursuits,  he  will  probably  experience  them 
with  more  frequency  than  the  active  man  who 
directs  his  energies  more  to  his  brain  and 
muscles  than  to  his  sensual  nature." 

We  may  remind  here  our  readers  that  there 
exists  an  effectual  but  perfectly  harmless 
medicine  which  is  administered  by  the  medical 
officers  of  prisons  to  relieve  any  physical  dis- 
comfort which  men  prisoners  may  experience. 
Prostitution  has  been  done  away  with  in  our 
prisons  by  medical  means,  and  therefore  there 
is  no  reason  why  by  the  same  means  it  should 


68      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

not  be  abolished  in  the  world  of  free  men  out- 
side the  prisons. 

To  sum  up!  Chastity  for  men  is  not  only 
morally  imperative,  but  is  also  physiolog- 
ically imperative.  Incontinence  on  the  part  of 
men  causes  a  waste  of  vital  force  which  im- 
poverishes their  moral  nature  and  weakens 
their  body. 

Furthermore,  the  incontinence  of  men  gives 
rise  to  terrible  sexual  diseases,  whose  victims 
are  not  themselves  alone  and  the  white  slaves 
whom'  they  destroy,  but  innocent  wives  and 
children. 

Chastity  for  men,  far  from  causing  atrophy 
of  men's  sexual  organs,  is  the  surest  guarantee 
against  atrophy.  As  a  high  medical  author- 
ity says:  "No  continent  man  need  be  de- 
terred by  this  apocryphal  fear  of  atrophy  of 
the  testes  from  living  a  chaste  life.  It  is  a  de- 
vice of  the  unchaste — a  lame  excuse  for  their 
incontinence,  not  founded  on  any  physiolog- 
ical law.  The  testes  will  see  to  it  that  their  ac- 


Chastity  and  the  Health  of  Men-     69 

tion  is  not  interfered  with.  Physiologically  it 
is  not  a  fact  that  the  power  of  secreting  semen 
is  annihilated  in  well-formed  adults  leading  a 
healthy  life  and  yet  remaining  continent." 
Sexuality  ought  to  lie  dormant  until  legitimate 
occasion  arises  for  its  use,  when  it  will  be 
found  to  exist  in  full  natural  vigour. 

The  sexual  power  of  men  has  been  given  to 
them  in  trust  for  the  perpetuation  of  the  race, 
and  they  have  not  been  faithful  to  that  trust. 
Says  a  man  who  is  a  doctor:  "The  secretion 
of  the  testicles  is  the  hope  of  the  future  of  the 
race,  and  yet  if  wrongfully  used  it  is  so  potent 
that  it  may  figuratively  be  classed  with  the  se- 
cretions of  the  poison  fangs  of  venomous  rep- 
tiles." 

Although  by  clean  thinking  and  healthy  liv- 
ing men  can  gain  control  over  themselves,  they 
renounce  that  control,  and  stimulate  their  de- 
sires by  foul  thinking,  by  obscene  words, 
sights,  and  acts,  by  alcohol,  and  even  by  drugs 
and  unnatural  practices. 


7o      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Although  by  medical  means  they  can  obtain 
such  aid  as  may  be  necessary,  and  although 
Nature  herself  affords  an  innocent  means  of 
relief,  these  are  rejected  on  the  plea  that  they 
are  dangerous  to  health.  By  this  excuse  men 
have  contrived  to  bar  all  ways  save  the  way 
that  conducts  them  to  the  brothel! 

It  is  essential  that  women  shall,  for  their 
own  protection,  take  firm  hold  of  these  facts. 
Let  them  remember  that,  in  the  words  of  Sir 
Dyce  Duckworth,  M.D.,  Consulting  Physician 
to  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital,  there  are  no 
organs  in  a  man's  body  that  can  be  better  con- 
trolled than  the  sexual  organs,  and  then  let 
them  say  to  men:  "And  what  of  women's 
health?  Why  should  it  any  longer  be  sacri- 
ficed, not  to  your  health  even,  but  to  your 
vices  ?" 


THE  DANGERS  OF  MARRIAGE— I 

WOMEN  have  always  known  that  marriage, 
viewed  as  a  spiritual  union,  is  not  without  its 
risks;  that  either  on  the  man's  part  or  the 
woman's  part  love  may  fail,  or  that  the  clash 
of  temperament  or  opinion  may  threaten  hap- 
piness. Hence  the  old  saying  that  marriage 
is  a  lottery. 

But  what  women  have  not  known  is  that 
marriage  as  a  physical  union  is  (apart  from 
the  natural  risk  of  childbirth,  which  also  they 
foresee)  a  matter  of  appalling  danger  to 
women. 

The  danger  of  marriage  is  due  to  the  low 
moral  standard  and  the  immoral  conduct  of 
men.  Men  before  marriage,  and  often  while 
they  are  married,  contract  sexual  disease 
from  prostitutes  and  give  this  disease  to  their 
wives. 

7* 


72      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

"The  infection  of  pure  women  in  marriage 
is,"  says  Dr.  Prince  Morrow,  "the  crowning 
infamy  of  our  social  life."  He  says  fur- 
ther: 

"Statistics  show  that  the  majority  of  men 
who  marry  have  contracted  disease,  and  that 
many  are  the  bearers  of  contagion  to  the 
women  they  marry.  We  witness  the  effects 
in  the  women  who  suffer  ill-health,  sterility, 
mutilation  of  their  bodies,  and  permanent  in- 
validism.  Society's  only  solicitude  is  that 
they  suffer  in  silence.  In  addition,  many  of 
them  are  compelled  to  suffer  the  sight  of  their 
babies  blinded  at  birth,  children  aborted  or 
born  with  the  mark  of  death  upon  them,  or, 
if  they  survive,  compelled  to  bear  in  their  frail 
bodies  the  stigmata  of  degeneration  and  dis- 
ease which  are  the  heritage  of  the  prosti- 
tute. .  .  .  No  one  can  deny  that  these  facts, 
the  saddest  facts  of  human  experience,  are  of 
common  occurrence,  and  they  will  continue  so 
long  as  society  shuts  its  eyes  to  the  existence 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — I     -    73 

of  this  danger  to  the  family,  and  from  a  false 
sense  of  prudery  or  a  fastidious  nicety  refuses 
to  be  enlightened." 

There  we  have  a  clear  statement,  and  if 
anything,  an  imflfer-statement,  of  the  risks  at- 
tendant upon  marriage. 

What  women  must  realise  is  that  sexual  dis- 
ease communicated  to  them  by  their  husbands 
is  the  cause  of  the  special  ailments  and  the 
poor  health  by  which  so  many  women  are  af- 
flicted. Women  are  not  naturally  invalids,  as 
they  have  been  taught  to  believe.  They  are 
invalids  because  they  are  the  victims  of  the 
sexual  diseases  known  as  syphilis  and  gonor- 
rhoea. 

Let  every  woman  not  yet  married  remember 
that  the  vast  majority  of  men  contract  sexual 
disease  in  one  of  its  forms  before  they  are 
married.  Let  every  woman  learn  that  to  cure 
a  man  of  such  disease  is  long  and  difficult, 
and  strictly  speaking  impossible,  since  no  doc- 
tor can  give  a  guarantee  that  his  patient  is 


74      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

cured,  and  will  not  immediately,  or  in  years 
to  come,  infect  his  wife. 

The  unmarried  woman,  whereas  now  she  is 
well  and  strong,  may  within  one  day  of  her 
marriage  lose  her  health  for  ever.  This  is  a 
hard  saying,  but  it  is  true,  and  women  have 
a  right  to  the  protection  that  knowledge 
gives. 

Never  again  must  young  women  enter  into 
marriage  blindfolded.  From  now  onwards 
they  must  be  warned  of  the  fact  that  marriage 
is  intensely  dangerous,  until  such  time  as 
men's  moral  standards  are  completely  changed 
and  they  become  as  chaste  and  clean-living  as 
women. 

A  clear  statement  of  the  case  is  given  by 
Dr.  Prince  Morrow,  when  he  says : 

"The  conditions  created  by  the  marriage  re- 
lation render  the  wife  a  helpless  and  unresist- 
ing victim.  The  vinculum  matrimonii  is  a 
chain  which  binds  and  fetters  the  woman  com- 
pletely, making  her  the  passive  recipient  of 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — I       -  75 

the  germs  of  any  sexual  disease  her  husband 
may  harbour.  On  her  wedding  night  she 
may,  and  often  does,  receive  unsuspectingly 
the  poison  of  a  disease  which  may  seriously 
affect  her  health  and  kill  her  children,  or,  by 
extinguishing  her  capacity  for  conception, 
may  sweep  away  all  the  most  cherished  hopes 
and  aspirations  of  married  life.  She  is  an  in- 
nocent in  every  sense  of  the  word.  She  is  in- 
capable of  foreseeing,  powerless  to  prevent,  this 
injury.  She  often  pays  with  her  life  for  her 
blind  confidence  in  the  man  who  ignorantly  or 
carelessly  passes  over  to  her  a  disease  which 
he  has  received  from  a  prostitute.  The  vic- 
tims are  for  the  most  part  young  and  virtuous 
women — the  idolised  daughters,  the  very 
flower  of  womankind." 

It  is  not  only  the  men  notoriously  and  obvi- 
ously immoral  who  are  dangerous  as  hus- 
bands. As  Dr.  Morrow  says : 

"Who  are  responsible  for  the  introduction 
of  venereal  diseases  into  marriage  and  the  con- 


76      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

sequent  wreckage  of  the  lives  of  innocent  wives 
and  children?  As  a  rule,  men  who  have  pre- 
sented a  fair  exterior  of  regular  and  correct 
living — often  the  men  of  good  business  and 
social  position — the  men  who,  indulging  in 
what  they  regard  as  the  harmless  dissipation 
of  'sowing  their  wild  oats/  have  entrapped  the 
gonococci  or  the  germs  of  syphilis.  These 
men,  believing  themselves  cured  it  may  be, 
sometimes  even  with  the  sanction  of  the  phy- 
sician, marry  innocent  women,  and  implant  in 
them  the  seeds  of  disease  destined  to  bear  such 
fearful  fruit/' 

In  previous  articles  it  has  been  shown  that 
an  overwhelming  majority  of  men  put  them- 
selves in  the  way  of  infection  before  marriage 
by  having  intercourse  with  prostitutes,  and 
that  80  per  cent,  of  these  men  become  diseased. 
These  facts  give  warning  to  women  that  the 
chances  are  strongly  against  the  man  who  of- 
fers himself  to  them  in  marriage  being 
healthy. 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — I        -77 

The  frequency  with  which  married  women 
are  infected  by  sexual  disease  is  very  great. 
Noeggerath,  the  great  authority,  stated  that 
three  out  of  five  married  women  are  infected 
by  gonorrhoea. 

Writing  on  Gonorrhoea  and  Puerperal  Fever, 
Tausig  says  that  "every  pregnant  woman 
should  be  examined  with  a  view  to  detecting  a 
latent  gonorrhoea." 

A  great  many  men  claim  that  before  mar- 
riage they  are  cured  of  the  sexual  disease  they 
have  contracted,  but  this,  as  we  have  said,  is 
more  than  they  can  prove  and  more  than  any 
doctor  can  certify.  Dominant  characteristics 
of  the  sexual  diseases  are  the  length  of  their 
duration,  and  their  tendency  to  become 
chronic,  and  to  recur  years  after  every  symp- 
tom seems  to  have  disappeared. 

As  Marshall,  a  great  authority  on  the  ques- 
tion, says:  "In  syphilis  contagious  lesions 
are  known  to  occur  ten  years  or  more  after 
the  commencement  of  the  disease,  even  in 


78      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

cases  which  have  been  properly  treated."  It 
must  be  remembered  that  the  views  which  doc- 
tors take  as  to  the  time  required  for  the  treat- 
ment of  gonorrhoea  and  syphilis  become  every 
day  more  pessimistic.  The  modern  tendency 
is  for  doctors  to  refuse  to  give  to  those  wish- 
ing to  marry  any  guarantee  that  a  cure  of  sex- 
ual disease,  in  either  of  its  forms,  has  been 
effected. 

In  this  connection  Marshall  says:  "The 
duty  of  the  medical  man  ends  after  pointing 
out  to  his  patient  the  possible  eventualities  in 
case  of  his  marriage." 

A  point  vitally  important  for  women  to 
bear  in  mind  is  that  unless  their  husbands  are 
completely  chaste  and  faithful  to  them  after 
marriage,  this  same  danger  that  they  them- 
selves will  be  infected  arises. 

"Unfortunately,"  as  Dr.  Prince  Morrow 
says,  "in  many  cases  it  is  the  unfaithful  hus- 
band and  father  who  receives  the  poison  from 
a  prostitute  in  an  extra-conjugal  adventure, 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — I         79 

carries  it  home,  and  distributes  it  to  his  fam- 
ily." 

We  have  in  the  past  referred  in  general 
terms  to  the  effects  produced  by  gonorrhoea 
and  syphilis  respectively,  and  now  we  will  ad- 
dress ourselves  to  this  matter  in  more  detail. 

Syphilis  is  the  prime  cause  of  race  degenera- 
tion. Insanity,  statisticians  declare,  is  on  the 
increase.  The  cause  of  that  is  syphilis.  Nerve 
trouble  is  also  on  the  increase,  we  are  told — 
the  rush  of  modern  life,  telephones,  and  motor 
cars  being,  as  people  fancy,  the  reason  of  it. 
The  true  cause  again  is  syphilis. 

This  poison  of  syphilis  working  in  the  race 
and  being  over  and  over  again  reintroduced 
is  producing  results  that  are  the  despair  of 
doctors  and  sociologists. 

The  definition  of  syphilis  as  given  by 
Marshall  is,  that  it  is  "a  contagious  disease, 
chronic  in  evolution,  intermittent  in  manifes- 
tations, and  indefinite  in  duration,  caused  by 
a  specific  microbe." 


8o      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Syphilis  is  hereditary  and  can  be  transmit- 
ted to  the  offspring,  being,  as  Marshall  ex- 
presses it,  "the  hereditary  disease  par  excel- 
lence." Syphilis  is  not  so  prevalent  as  gonor- 
rhoea, which  is  contracted  by  80  per  cent,  of 
men,  but  complete  statistics  are  unavailable, 
and  it  is  possible  that  as  many  as  20  per  cent, 
contract  it.  This  ailment  being  fiercely  conta- 
gious, a  syphilitic  husband  almost  certainly 
infects  his  wife. 

The  disease  passes  through  three  stages — 
primary,  secondary,  and  tertiary.  The  aim  of 
a  doctor  is  to  prevent  the  disease  reaching  the 
tertiary  stage.  As  the  appearance  of  tertiary 
symptoms  is  sometimes  delayed  for  many  years 
he  can  have  no  assurance  that  he  has  been  suc- 
cessful. 

It  used  to  be  thought  that  syphilis  was  con- 
tagious only  in  the  primary  and  secondary 
stages,  but  the  latest  opinion  is  that  it  is  con- 
tagious even  in  its  tertiary  stage.  Certainly  it 
can  be  communicated  to  the  offspring  in  the 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — I       -  81 

tertiary  stage,  and  what  may  happen  is  this, 
that  an  expectant  mother  is  infected  by  her  un- 
born child,  who,  having  inherited  syphilis  from 
its  father,  in  turn  infects  its  mother.  Many 
syphilitic  children  fall  victims  to  their  disease 
before  birth.  If  they  survive  birth  then  they 
are  a  source  of  contagion  to  nurse  and  to 
mother. 

In  the  tertiary  stages  of  syphilis  any  part  of 
the  body  may  be  affected — nose,  lips,  tongue, 
throat,  lungs,  joints,  digestive  organs,  heart, 
sex  organs,  eyes,  and  ears.  Above  all,  the 
brain,  spinal  cord,  and  nervous  system  are  lia- 
ble to  be  affected.  Inherited  syphilis  causes 
mental  deficiency,  idiocy,  malformations  of  all 
kinds,  and  other  diseased  conditions. 

That  syphilis  causes  loathsome  skin  disease 
is  well  known.  Sometimes  it  manifests  itself 
in  the  form  of  ulcers  resembling  lupus,  but 
more  rapidly  destructive  in  their  effect.  Ter- 
rible disfigurement  of  the  face,  and  especially 
of  the  nose,  may  be  caused  by  syphilis. 


82       Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Syphilis  is  an  important  cause  of  anaemia,  as 
it  acts  on  the  blood  by  diminishing  the  number 
and  power  of  the  red  blood  corpuscles,  by  di- 
minishing the  proportion  of  haemoglobin,  and 
by  increasing  the  number  of  the  white  corpus- 
cles. 

Syphilis  is  also  a  very  important  cause  of 
heart  disease.  Says  Marshall:  "Syphilitic 
disease  of  the  heart  is  more  common  than  is 
generally  supposed;  in  fact,  syphilis  must  be 
regarded  as  the  chief  factor  in  heart  disease, 
apart  from  rheumatism.  It  may  be  insidious 
in  onset  and  remain  latent  a  considerable 
time  without  giving  rise  to  symptoms,  and  then 
cause  sudden  death  in  persons  apparently  in 
the  prime  of  life.  True  Angina  pectoris  must 
in  most  cases  be  due  to  syphilis,  since  this  is 
the  most  frequent  cause  of  the  disease  of  the 
coronary  arteries  and  aorta." 

"Probably  no  disease  is  more  productive  of 
arterial  degeneration  than  syphilis,"  says  Mott. 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — I      *  83 

The  veins  and  the  glands  are  particularly  sub- 
ject to  damage  by  syphilis. 

Syphilis  sometimes  produces  trouble  resem- 
bling gastric  ulcer  and  disorders  of  the  stom- 
ach. Professor  Fournier  regards  inherited 
syphilis  as  likely  to  constitute  a  favourable  soil 
for  the  development  of  appendicitis. 

There  are  syphilitic  forms  of  pneumonia  and 
pleurisy.  That  syphilis  is  a  predisposing  cause 
to  tuberculosis  is  now  admitted. 

The  sex  organs  are  naturally  very  subject 
to  attack  by  syphilis,  and  much  suffering  is  en- 
dured by  women  on  this  account.  Syphilis  is 
also  the  chief  cause  of  miscarriage.  Its  effect 
in  destroying  and  deforming  the  next  genera- 
tion is  particularly  great. 

Syphilis  is  now  known  to  be  the  cause  of 
Bright's  disease,  diabetes,  hysteria,  eye  trouble, 
producing  blindness.  It  is  also  recognised  as 
a  predisposing  cause  of  cancer.  "If  the  inclu- 
sion of  sarcoma  and  carcinoma  among  the 


84      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

parasyphilitic  affections  seem  to  be  transgress- 
ing the  limits  of  pathological  knowledge," 
says  Marshall,  "we  must  admit  that  no  other 
satisfactory  explanation  of  the  origin  of  ma- 
lignant tumours  has  yet  been  brought  for- 
ward." 

"Syphilis,"  says  Fournier,  "is  a  veritable 
poison  to  the  nervous  system."  It  is  a  cause 
of  paralysis,  neuralgia,  neuritis. 

"One  of  the  principal  causes  of  insanity  is 
syphilis,"  says  Marshall.  Epilepsy  and  idiocy 
are  referable  to  the  same  cause. 

These  consequences  are  not  only  suffered  by 
the  persons  who  wantonly  contract  syphilis  in 
the  course  of  immoral  living.  They  are  suf- 
fered by  innocent  wives,  and  as  the  Bible  tells 
us,  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited  in  the 
form  of  syphilitic  maladies  upon  their  children 
and  their  children's  children. 

In  a  future  chapter  we  shall  have  more  to 
say  as  to  the  hereditary  aspect  of  this  question, 
but  we  may  here  quote  the  opinion  of  Marshall 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — I         85 

that  the  generative  effects  of  syphilis  are  fre- 
quently transmitted  to  the  third  generation, 
and  possibly  further,  only  to  die  out  with  even- 
tual sterility. 

Thus,  apart  from  the  women  infected  in 
marriage,  there  are  numbers  of  women  who 
have  inherited  from  their  forbears  the  terrible 
legacy  of  suffering — and  there  are  men  who 
also  suffer,  though  they  have  learned  so  little 
by  it  that  they  seek  in  immoral  intercourse  new 
infection,  which  they  in  their  turn  transmit  to 
generations  yet  to  come. 

The  medical  profession  is  constantly  discov- 
ering more  about  syphilis,  and  every  new  dis- 
covery teaches  them  to  dread  it  more  as  one  of 
the  worst  enemies  of  the  human  race. 

The  knowledge  we  already  have,  as  summed 
up  in  the  facts  given  above,  bears  out  the  say- 
ing of  a  doctor  who  affirms  that  syphilis  is  the 
principal  cause  of  death  occurring  before  the 
natural  term,  and  that  "If  syphilis  and  gonor- 
rhoea were  eliminated,  you  would  have,  from 


86      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

the  medical  point  of  view,  almost  a  new  world 
to  deal  with." 

Syphilis  and  gonorrhoea  can  be  eliminated 
in.two  ways.  One  is  that  men  shall  lead  chaste 
lives.  If  they  refuse  to  do  this,  then  the  only 
other  way  in  which  syphilis  and  gonorrhoea  can 
be  exterminated  is  by  exterminating  the  race  it- 
self. 


THE  DANGERS  OF  MARRIAGE— II 

THOSE  who  declare  war  upon  sexual  disease 
are  apt  to  direct  their  whole  attention  to 
syphilis,  leaving  gonorrhoea  more  or  less  out 
of  account.  Thus  the  doctors  who  lately 
memorialised  the  Government  asked  for  a 
Royal  Commission  to  inquire  into  syphilis,  and 
gonorrhoea  they  did  not  mention  at  all.  Con- 
sidering that,  as  Neisser  says,  70  per  cent,  of 
the  cases  of  sexual  disease  which  come  under 
the  notice  of  medical  men  are  gonorrhoea,  the 
reason  why  gonorrhoea  is  thus  ignored  calls 
for  some  explanation. 

In  the  old  days  there  was  a  saying  that  gon- 
orrhoea need  be  medically  treated  only  in 
one  way — with  contempt.  In  the  light  of  pres- 
ent medical  knowledge  it  is  seen  that  not  only 
because  of  its  greater  prevalence,  but  because 
of  its  devastating  effect  upon  its  victims,  gon- 

87 


88      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

orrhcea  is  not  less  terrible  than  syphilis  itself. 

Speaking  of  the  relative  gravity  of  syphilis 
and  gonorrhoea  Prince  Morrow,  M.D.,  says: 
"Modern  science  has  taught  us  that  in  view  of 
its  extensive  prevalence,  its  conservation  of 
virulence  after  apparent  cure,  and  its  tendency 
to  invade  the  uterus  and  annexial  organs,  with 
results  often  dangerous  to  life  and  destructive 
to  the  reproductive  capacity  of  the  woman, 
gonorrhoea  overshadows  syphilis  in  importance 
as  a  social  peril." 

Further,  comparing  the  effects  of  syphilis 
and  gonorrhoea,  Dr.  Morrow  says : 

"In  the  case  of  gonococcic  infection,  the  in- 
dividual risks  the  wife  is  made  to  incur  are 
much  more  serious  than  those  following 
syphilis.  The  infection  may  invade  the  cavity 
of  the  uterus  and  ascend  to  the  annexial  or- 
gans, causing  salpingitis,  ovaritis,  peritonitis, 
&c.,  destroying  her  conceptional  capacity  and 
rendering  her  irrevocably  sterile,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  resulting  dangers  to  life  and  the 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — II        89 

frequent  necessity  of  surgical  operations  to  re- 
move her  tubes  and  ovaries." 

The  author  of  Gonorrhoea  in  Women,  Pal- 
mer Findley,  M.D.,  says:  "I  might  further 
add  in  support  of  the  statement  of  Morrow  that 
the  risks  to  the  wife  are  greater  in  gonorrhoea 
than  in  syphilis,  that  the  prospects  of  cure  are 
better  for  syphilis." 

It  used  to  be  thought  that  whereas  syphilis 
was  a  constitutional  disease  affecting  the 
organism  as  a  whole,  gonorrhoea  was  a  purely 
local  disease,  affecting  only  the  sex  organs. 
But  the  greatest  experts  are  now  coming  to 
the  conclusion  that  gonorrhoea,  besides  being 
a  disease  of  the  sex  organs,  must  also  be  re- 
garded as  a  constitutional  malady.  A  state- 
ment on  this  point  made  by  Dr.  Prince  Mor- 
row, is  as  follows : 

"As  the  result  of  modern  investigations  it 
may  be  positively  affirmed  that  the  gonococcus 
is  susceptible  of  being  taken  up  by  the  blood- 
vessels and  lymphatics,  and  that  it  may  affect 


go      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

almost  every  organ  of  the  body.  Experiments 
have  demonstrated  its  presence  not  only  in  the 
ovaries,  tubes,  and  peritoneal  cavity,  which  it 
reaches  through  progressive  invasion  of  the 
intermediate  mucous  membranes,  but  also  in 
the  brain  and  cord,  the  endocardium,  the 
pleura,  the  liver." 

In  inquiring  into  the  reasons  why  this  great 
plague  of  gonorrhoea  is  too  lightly  regarded, 
it  is  impossible  to  reject  the  belief  that  one 
reason  is  to  be  found  in  the  greater  severity 
with  which  gonorrhoea  attacks  women  as  com- 
pared with  men.  Gonorrhoea  is  in  fact  the 
great  curse  of  women,  and  is  the  cause  of  most 
of  the  special  ailments  from  which  they  suf- 
fer. 

Owing  to  the  ravages  that  gonorrhoea  works 
upon  women,  womanhood  itself  has  almost 
come  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  disease. 

Women  have  always  wondered  why  mater- 
nity and  their  sex  life  as  a  whole  should,  for 
so  many  of  them,  be  indistinguishable  from  dis- 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — II        91 

ease.  If  these  are  natural  functions,  why 
should  they  be  attended  by  so  much  illness  and 
pain  ?  Sexual  disease  is  at  the  bottom  of  this 
mystery.  Syphilis  inherited  and  acquired  is 
partly  responsible  for  women's  suffering,  but 
gonorrhoea  plays  by  far  the  bigger  part. 

There  are  medical  authorities  who  believe 
that  of  cases  of  "women's  diseases"  as  many 
as  90  per  cent,  or  even  95  per  cent,  are  due  to 
gonorrhoea.  As  one  of  these  authorities  says, 
"The  more  the  disease  is  studied  and  the 
greater  the  improvement  in  bacteriology,  the 
higher  is  to  be  found  the  percentage." 

Even  the  health  of  unmarried  women  is  af- 
fected as  the  result  of  the  prevalence  of  sexual 
disease. 

Another  point  to  be  remembered  is  that, 
gonorrhoea  being  highly  contagious,  many  girl 
children  contract  it  from  their  mother,  and 
one  eminent  doctor  suggests  that  this  gonor- 
rhoeal  infection  in  infancy  is  responsible  for 
suffering  in  later  life.  Inherited  syphilis,  too, 


92       Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

is  responsible  for  many  cases  of  weak  and  dis- 
eased sex  organs. 

There  is  yet  another  reason  which  we  sus- 
pect is  keeping  the  doctors  silent  on  the  sub- 
ject of  gonorrhoea,  and  this  is  that  the  problem 
is  so  awful  in  its  magnitude  and  in  its  character 
that  they  shrink  from  admitting  its  existence. 

The  fact  is  that  this  is  an  evil  absolutely  in- 
curable save  by  one  means,  namely,  the  chas- 
tity of  men — the  observance  by  men  of  the 
same  moral  standard  as  that  accepted  by  virtu- 
ous women.  This  the  medical  profession  can 
advise  but  do  not  feel  themselves  able  to  en- 
force. 

The  only  people  who  dare  face  this  evil  of 
gonorrhoea  and  the  only  people  who  can  over- 
throw it  are  women.  When  women  acquire 
the  necessary  influence,  political  and  social, 
they  will  have  it  in  their  power  to  convince 
men  that  to  live  cleanly  or  to  be  cast  out  from 
the  society  of  decent  women  are  the  alternatives 
open  to  them. 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — II        93 

As  we  have  said,  the  doctors  are  appalled 
by  the  problem  which  gonorrhoea  presents,  and 
well  they  may  be. 

To  begin  with,  there  is,  as  we  have  repeat- 
edly shown  by  quotations  from  the  greatest 
authorities,  no  disease  of  the  adult  male  popu- 
lation which  approaches  gonorrhoea  in  its 
prevalence — from  75  to  80  per  cent,  of  men 
(and  some  say  more  than  this)  being  infected 
by  it  before  marriage.  So  much  for  the  ex- 
tent of  the  evil.  Now  as  to  the  possibility  of 
cure. 

There  is  perhaps  no  disease  so  difficult  to 
cure.  To  speak  of  cure,  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  word,  is  indeed  impossible.  And  when,  as 
so  very  often  happens,  a  man  has,  after  a  first 
attack  of  the  disease,  again  exposed  himself  to 
infection  and  has  become  reinfected,  the  case 
is  serious  indeed. 

A  man  who  has  contracted  gonorrhoea  may 
after  medical  treatment  show  no  further  symp- 
toms, but  that  is  no  proof  that  he  is  cured. 


94      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Palmer  Findley  says  that  he  has  repeatedly 
demonstrated  the  presence  of  the  gonococcus 
in  the  urethra  when  there  was  no  possible  se- 
cretion. To  believe  that  the  disease  is  termi- 
nated when  its  symptomatic  discharge  has 
disappeared  is,  he  says,  "a  delusion/'  and  he 
adds : 

"Now  we  are  all  but  ready  to  say  that  Noeg- 
garath  was  right  when  he  said  the  gonococcus 
can  exist  in  the  tissues  throughout  the  lifetime 
in  the  individual,  and  at  any  time,  under  fa- 
vourable influences,  the  infection  may  light 
upon  what  appears  to  be  a  new  and  acute  infec- 
tion, or  may  transmit  a  virulent  infection  with- 
out itself  becoming  manifest." 

A  very  important  statement  made  by  this 
same  authority  is  as  follows : 

"Individuals  are  observed  to  infect  others, 
yet  apparently  are  themselves  immune  to  in- 
fection. The  explanation  lies  in  the  presence 
of  a  gonorrhoeal  infection  in  the  absence  of  all 
the  clinical  signs.  In  the  first  individual  the 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — II        95 

gonococcus  had  little  virulence,  but  when 
transmitted  to  sterile  tissues  it  assumed  an  ac- 
tive role." 

From  this  statement  it  will  be  seen  that  a 
man  who  is  apparently  long  cured  may  infect 
his  wife,  who  will  then  suffer  from  gonorrhoea 
in  an  acute  form,  owing  to  the  very  fact  that 
she  has  until  then  been  healthy  and  therefore 
presents  virgin  soil  upon  which  the  deadly 
gonococcus  can  flourish. 

The  truth  is  that  a  man  who  by  immoral  in- 
tercourse exposes  himself  to  infection  must  act 
on  the  assumption  that  he  will  infect  himself 
for  life,  and  that  by  so  infecting  himself  he  is 
rendering  himself  unfit  for  marriage.  As 
James  Foster  Scott,  M.D.,  says :  "No  individ- 
ual who  expects  ever  to  marry  has  any  right 
to  indulge  in  sexual  impurity." 

To  the  frequency  with  which  wives  are  in- 
fected in  marriage  we  referred  in  the  last 
chapter.  We  showed  that,  according  to 
Noeggarath,  three  out  of  five  married  women 


96      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

suffer  from  gonorrhoea.  We  quoted  the 
opinion  expressed  by  another  authority  that 
every  pregnant  woman  should  be  examined  for 
sign  of  gonorrhoea.  Yet  another  doctor  says 
that  he  has  found  more  than  25  per  cent,  of 
expectant  mothers  suffering  from  this  disease. 

The  specialist,  Ricord,  believed  that  90  per 
cent,  of  women  marrying  men  who  had  con- 
tracted gonorrhoea  became  themselves  infected 
with  the  disease  either  in  an  acute  or  latent 
form. 

Gonorrhoea  in  women  does  terrible  mischief. 
It  is  a  cause  of  peritonitis.  It  gives  rise  also 
to  disease  of  the  bladder  and  kidneys.  It  may 
cause  gonorrhceal  rheumatism  and  gonorrhceal 
affections  of  the  heart. 

It  is,  however,  the  sex  organs  that  are  pri- 
marily open  to  attack  by  gonorrhoea.  The  re- 
sults of  such  attack  vary  in  different  persons, 
and  range  from  poor  health  and  debility  to  very 
serious  disease,  necessitating  surgical  opera- 
tion. Gonorrhoea  is  a  potent  cause  of  sterility 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — II        97 

and  miscarriage.  It  is  held  by  some  doctors 
that  the  abortive  influence  of  gonorrhoea  is  as 
pronounced  as  that  of  syphilis.  Some  tumours 
are  due  also  to  gonorrhoea. 

Many  cases  of  puerperal  fever  are  attribu- 
table to  gonorrhoea.  Says  Palmer  Findley: 
"Every  careful  observer  of  obstetric  practice 
of  large  experience  is  keenly  aware  of  the 
frightful  prevalence  of  gonorrhoeal  puerperal 
infections." 

Pregnancy  and  child-birth  have,  the  medical 
authorities  tell  us,  a  most  important  effect 
on  the  course  of  gonorrhceal  infection.  A 
woman  who  has  been  infected  may  suffer  com- 
paratively little  until  she  is  about  to  become  a 
mother,  and  then  and  more  especially  at  the 
time  of  child-birth  and  after  it  the  disease  de- 
velops and  spreads  with  alarming  rapidity.  A 
great  deal  of  suffering  experienced  by  women 
before  and  at  the  birth  of  their  children  must 
be  due  to  gonorrhoea. 

The  following  quotation  from  James  Foster 


98      Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Scott,  M.  D.,  is  instructive.  He  says:  "In 
women  gonorrhoea  not  only  tends  to  become 
chronic  and  to  invade  the  internal  sexual  or- 
gans with  destructive  changes,  but  with  each 
occurrence  of  menstruation  there  is  also  a  like- 
lihood of  its  renewed  activity  and  further 
spread;  and  especially  does  danger  threaten 
if  she  become  pregnant — the  result  not  show- 
ing fully  until  some  weeks  after  the  full-time 
labour  or  miscarriage." 

The  symptoms  of  gonorrhoea  which  medical 
writers  describe  are  only  too  familiar  to  thou- 
sands of  women.  Valentine,  an  American 
doctor,  says: 

"How  dismal  is  the  history  of  many  a  young 
woman  who  marries  with  all  the  accompani- 
ments of  a  wedding  celebration.  From  the 
husband's  latent  gonorrhoea  many  of  them  con- 
tract conditions  which  alter  their  lives  and 
even  their  characters.  They  suffer  from  back- 
ache, irregular  and  painful  menstruation, 
urinary  disorders,  localised  peritonitis,  loss  of 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage — II        99 

their  healthful  beauty,  lassitude,  hysteria,  ster- 
ility, miscarriages,  or  death." 

Another  doctor  says : 

"The  chronic  or  creeping  form  of  gonor- 
rhoea in  women  demands  a  considerable 
amount  of  attention.  A  healthy  young 
woman  marries,  and  in  about  a  year  after  her 
marriage  she  finds  that  her  health  is  very  much 
impaired.  Before  marriage  she  was  full  of 
health  and  spirits,  was  buoyant  and  active,  but 
she  now  feels  weak,  depressed,  and  irritable, 
and  has  vague  pains  in  her  body.  Formerly 
her  periods  were  painless  and  regular.  Now 
they  are  painful  and  variable.  .  .  .  This  is  a 
typical  case.  The  symptoms  and  signs  of  the 
disease  may,  however,  vary  greatly  from  mere 
vague  discomfort  and  slight  menstrual  de- 
rangement to  the  most  distressing  disturb- 


ances." 


The  following  words  taken  from  the  writ- 
ings of  another  eminent  physician  are  impress- 
ive. He  says: 


ioo     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

"It  is  common  to  hear  women  who  con- 
stantly suffer  from  uterine  torture  employ  such 
words  as  these:  When  I  was  a  girl  I  was 
quite  well.  It  is  only  since  my  marriage  that 
I  have  become  ill/  And  every  day  this  confi- 
dence, this  plaintive  refrain,  saddens  the  gyne- 
cologist. It  is  continual  and  inexorable. 
From  the  discoloured  and  suffering  faces  we 
may  guess  a  whole  past  of  debility,  and  the 
origin  is  always  marriage.  The  husbands 
have  a  quiet  conscience.  They  go  about  their 
business,  or  to  the  clubs,  create  fresh  pleasure 
or  new  relations  for  themselves,  and  desert  the 
mournful  marriage  bed.  They  can  reckon  on 
sympathy,  for  who  does  not  pity  them  for  hav- 
ing married  wives  with  such  bad  health." 

Enough  has  surely  been  said  to  prove  the 
dangers  of  marriage;  to  show  the  injury  done 
to  women  by  the  low  standards  and  immoral 
conduct  prevalent  amongst  men. 

What  a  cruel  mockery  it  is  that  men  have 
alleged  the  very  weakness  of  which  their  be- 


The  Dangers  of  Marriage— tl      -101 

haviour  is  the  cause  as  a  reason  why  women 
should  be  condemned  to  political  inferiority! 
And  what  a  prospect  of  emancipation  from 
suffering  and  illness  is  opened  to  women  by 
the  medical  facts  that  we  lay  before  them! 
For  these  facts  show  that  it  is  not  Nature  that 
has  doomed  women  to  suffering,  to  illness. 
These  evils  are  preventable,  and  now  that 
women  have  the  knowledge  so  long  denied 
them,  they  can  consider  how  to  protect  them- 
selves from  foul  infectious  diseases. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  BIRTH-RATE 

THE  birth-rate  is  declining.  Bishops,  men 
sociologists  and  others  are  bewailing  the  fact. 
Of  course,  they  blame  the  women.  That,  men 
have  done  since  Adam.  They  seem  to  forget 
that  the  question  of  how  many  children  shall 
be  born  is  one  for  women  to  decide,  since  it  is 
they  who  have  to  pay  the  price  of  these  new 
lives. 

Quite  apart  from  that,  there  is  another  sense 
in  which  women  are  responsible  for  the  falling 
birth-rate,  and  so  far  as  women  are  concerned 
it  will  fall  lower  still — not  only  the  birth-rate 
but  the  marriage-rate  as  well. 

Marriage  becomes  increasingly  distasteful 
to  intelligent  women — not  motherhood,  but 
marriage.  There  are  numbers  of  women  who 
long  for  children,  but  are  not  satisfied  with 
the  marriage  laws  nor  with  men's  standards 
of  husbandhood  and  fatherhood. 

102 


The  Decline  of  the  Birth-Bate      103 

In  the  first  place,  the  position  to  which  the 
law  relegates  a  wife  is  intolerable  to  self-re- 
specting women.  By  law,  a  wife  is  not  the 
mother  of  her  own  child,  and  her  wishes  con- 
cerning the  child  may  be,  except  in  very  ex- 
treme cases,  entirely  over-ridden,  especially 
where  religion  and  education  are  concerned. 

The  English  law  compels  a  wife  to  submit 
to  persistent  and  degrading  immorality  on  the 
part  of  a  husband,  though  one  single  act  of 
unfaithfulness  on  her  part  entitles  him  to  di- 
vorce her.  If  she  should  wish  to  take  the  law 
into  her  own  hands  and  leave  a  husband  who 
insults  her  and  probably  infects  her  with  dis- 
ease by  frequenting  houses  of  ill-fame,  her  hus- 
band can  force  her  into  submission  by  keeping 
her  children,  so  that  if  she  leaves  him  she  must 
also  leave  them. 

Women  who  know  what  is  the  moral  stand- 
ard of  those  who  describe  themselves  as  the 
"average  man,"  and  what  is  the  consequence 
of  that  standard  where  themselves  and  their 


IO4     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

children  are  concerned,  may  well  abstain  from 
marriage ! 

The  new  realisation  by  women  of  the  appal- 
ling prevalence  of  sexual  disease,  and  the 
ghastly  frequency  with  which  women  are  in- 
fected by  their  husbands,  will  inevitably  check 
marriage. 

Love  is  stronger  than  death,  the  saying  goes. 
But  love  will  not  be  found  stronger  than  dis- 
ease, when  that  disease  is  caused  by  vice,  which 
blasphemes  love  and  desecrates  love. 

There  can  be  no  mating  between  the  spirit- 
ually developed  women  of  this  new  day  and 
men  who  in  thought  or  conduct  with  regard  to 
sex  matters  are  their  inferiors. 

Therefore  the  birth-rate  will  fall  lower  yet. 

For  severely  practical,  common-sensible, 
sanitary  reasons  women  are  chary  of  marriage. 
When  the  best-informed  and  most  experienced 
medical  men  say  that  the  vast  majority  of  men 
expose  themselves  before  marriage  to  sexual 
disease,  and  that  only  an  "insignificant  minor- 


The  Decline  of  the  Birth-Rate      105 

ity,"  as  one  authority  puts  it — 25  per  cent,  at 
most — escape  infection;  when  these  medical 
authorities  further  say  that  sexual  disease  is 
difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  cure,  healthy 
women  naturally  hesitate  to  marry.  Mr. 
Punch's  "advice  to  those  about  to  marry — 
Don't!"  has  a  true  and  terrible  application  to 
the  facts  of  the  case. 

Perhaps  our  childless  and  celibate  Bishops 
may  say  that  it  is  a  woman's  duty,  faced  by  the 
prospect,  if  she  marries,  of  being  infected  by 
her  husband,  to  sacrifice  herself  and  to  marry 
all  the  same.  They  must  not  be  surprised  if 
such  advice  falls  upon  deaf  ears.  "Sacrifice 
yourself,  sacrifice  yourself,"  is  a  cry  that  has 
lost  its  power  over  women.  Why  should 
women  sacrifice  themselves  to  no  purpose  save 
that  of  losing  their  health  and  happiness? 
Now  that  women  have  learnt  to  think  for  them- 
selves, they  discover  that  woman,  in  sacrificing 
herself,  sacrifices  the  race. 

If  the  Bishops,  and  the  whole  pack  of  men 


io6    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

who  delight  in  advising,  lecturing,  and  preach- 
ing to  women,  would  exhort  the  members  of 
their  own  sex  to  some  sacrifice  of  their  baser 
impulses,  it  would  be  better  for  the  race, 
better  for  women,  and  better  even  for 
men. 

Women  admit,  therefore,  that  the  falling 
birth-rate  is,  and  will  continue  to  be,  in  part 
due  to  their  own  deliberate  intention.  But  it 
is  due  also  in  large  part  to  causes  for  which 
women  are  in  no  way  responsible.  A  great 
many  women  are,  through  no  fault  of  their 
own,  incapable  of  becoming  mothers.  The 
reason  of  this  is  that  they  have  been  infected 
by  venereal  disease,  which  is  the  great  foe  to 
the  reproduction  of  the  race. 

The  two  forms  of  venereal  disease  operate 
in  different  ways.  Gonorrhoea  causes  inabil- 
ity to  bear  any  child  at  all,  or,  in  some  cases, 
inability  to  bear  more  than  one.  It  also  de- 
stroys the  capacity  for  fatherhood,  although 
this  is  a  point  which  is  very  often  wilfully  ig- 


The  Decline  of  the  Birth-Rate      107 

nored  by  those  who  delight  to  criticise  women. 

It  is  declared  by  Dr.  Prince  Morrow  that 
men  are  ultimately  responsible  for  from  50  to 
75  per  cent,  of  sterile  marriages — that  in  20  to 
25  per  cent,  of  such  cases  the  disease  has  de- 
stroyed the  husband's  capacity  for  fatherhood, 
and  in  the  others  the  husband  has  infected  his 
wife,  and  thus  robbed  her  of  the  power  of  ma- 
ternity. 

Such  being  the  connection  between  the  prob- 
lem of  what  is  called  "race  suicide"  and  the 
infection  of  women  in  marriage,  we  realise 
how  unjustly  women  have  suffered  in  the  past 
from  self-blame,  and  the  blame  of  others,  for 
failure  to  bring  children  into  the  world.  A 
childless  woman  used  to  be  taught  that  she  had 
failed  in  her  life's  mission.  If  she  had  known 
the  facts  that  women  know  to-day  they  might 
have  taught  her  that  she  was  not  herself  to 
blame. 

A  quotation  from  a  doctor  is  very  much  to 
the  point  here.  He  says : 


io8     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

"In  the  martyrology  of  women  there  is  no 
more  pathetic  sight  than  the  woman  who  has 
been  balked  of  her  instinctive  desire  for  chil- 
dren, and  who  goes  from  one  physician  to 
another  in  the  hope,  oftentimes  in  vain,  of  hav- 
ing her  sterility  cured.  The  instinct  and 
craving  for  maternity  becomes  a  veritable  ob- 
session. She  will,  at  any  cost  of  time  and  pain 
and  suffering,  submit  to  any  treatment  which 
promises  relief — curetting,  division  of  the 
cervix,  and  even  more  formidable  operations 
upon  her  pelvic  organs.  And  the  satire  of  it 
all  is  that  in  many  cases  the  husband,  inflated 
with  the  sense  of  his  own  virility,  is  himself 
responsible  for  the  sterility." 

These  medical  statements  of  fact  provide 
women  with  a  strong  defence  against  the  ac- 
cusation that  they  are  responsible  for  race 
suicide. 

Another  authority  on  this  matter,  Grandin, 
says: 

"From  the  present  standpoint,  man  is  not 


The  Decline  of  the  Birth-Rate      109 

the  lord  of  creation,  but  the  exterminator  of 
the  species.  Kill  the  gonococcus  by  teaching 
man  the  danger  to  woman  and  to  the  species, 
should  she  acquire  it,  and  then  man  returns  to 
the  condition  he  is  pictured  as  having  been  in 
before  Eve  tempted  him  with  the  apple,  and  he 
weakly  said  to  his  Maker,  'It  is  the  woman's 
fault/  " 

And  this  wise  man  continues: 

"As  I  have  reiterated  above,  according  to 
my  light,  the  solution  of  our  problem  lies  in 
education.  Prostitution,  the  social  evil,  is  re- 
sponsible to  the  greatest  extent  for  the  dis- 
semination of  gonorrhoea  and  of  syphilis.  In 
the  toleration  of  this  evil  by  society,  too  much 
stress  has  been  laid  upon  woman's  part  in  dis- 
semination and  too  little  on  man's.  As  has 
been  customary  with  the  latter  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world,  he  points  the  finger  of  scorn 
at  woman;  he  abets  woman  in  making  of  the 
prostitute  the  social  outcast,  and  yet,  were  it 
not  for  the  solicitations  of  the  man,  for  his 


no     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

untrammelled  licentiousness,  there  would  be 
few  prostitutes.  It  is  time  that  there  should 
cease  to  be  recognised  a  different  code  of 
morals  for  man  and  for  woman.  That  which 
is  wrong  in  woman  is  equally  wrong  in  man, 
and  in  face  of  the  diseases  under  considera- 
tion the  man  is  the  chief  offender,  and  the 
finger  of  scorn  should  be  first  aimed  at  him. 
.  .  .  The  sexual  instinct  is  a  God-given  in- 
stinct, its  purpose  being  the  perpetuation  of 
the  species.  Man,  largely  through  ignorance 
of  the  calamities  following  the  misuse  of  this 
instinct,  has  converted  it  into  one  of  exter- 
mination of  the  species.  Ignorance  being  at 
the  bottom  of  his  folly,  it  follows  that  man,  at 
that  age  when  his  instinct  is  established,  should 
be  educated  in  reference  to  its  purposes,  and 
also  in  regard  to  the  consequences  if  the  in- 
stinct is  misused." 

Syphilis  is  a  second  factor  in  race  suicide. 
This  disease  produces  miscarriages,  often 
many  times  repeated  in  the  case  of  the  same 


The  Decline  of  the  Birth-Bate      in 

woman.  It  causes  the  birth  of  dead  children, 
and  of  children  who  survive  birth  only  for  a 
few  hours,  weeks,  or  months.  Syphilis  is  in 
fact  the  prime  reason  of  a  high  infantile  mor- 
tality. Mental  deficiency,  dwarfism,  every 
kind  of  physical  deformity,  even  the  birth  of 
beings  hardly  human,  are  to  be  found  as  the 
result  of  syphilis. 

We  say  again  that  it  is  for  those  who  have 
inherited  from  Adam  the  inclination  to  blame 
women  for  all  that  goes  wrong  in  the  world, 
now  to  admit  the  true  facts  connected  with  the 
falling  birth-rate — facts  that  have  so  long 
been  kept  hidden  from  women. 


WHAT  WOMEN  THINK 

FOR  generations  women  have  been  very  silent, 
but  they  have  thought  the  more,  and  the  time 
has  come  to  put  their  thoughts  into  words. 

It  is  now  the  turn  of  men  who  have  hitherto 
done  the  talking  to  listen  to  what  women  have 
to  say  about  life  and  its  problems. 

In  a  world  peopled  with  men  and  women, 
the  question  of  the  relationship  between  the 
sexes  is  naturally  one  which  occupies  a  large 

place  in  the  minds  of  women  as  well  as  of 

* 

men. 

One  of  the  thoughts  of  women  which  has 
now  come  to  the  point  of  expression  is — that 
prostitution  must  end!  They  will  be  told, 
they  are  told,  that  such  a  thing  is  impossible. 
But  in  answer  to  that  they  say  again,  with 
the  utmost  firmness — prostitution  must  end. 

They  are  assured  that  in  the  past  attempts 

112 


What  Women  Think  113 

have  been  made  over  and  over  again  to  get 
rid  of  prostitution,  and  that  such  attempts 
have  failed,  and  always  will  fail,  so  long  as 
the  world  lasts. 

Women  have  a  very  simple  answer  to  that 
argument,  and  it  is:  "You  have  never  tried 
to  abolish  prostitution,  and  so,  of  course,  you 
have  not  succeeded." 

Certainly,  efforts  have  been  made  to  cover 
up  all  outward  trace  of  the  existence  of  this 
loathsome  thing,  but  the  real  cure  for  it  has 
never  been  applied.  Beneath  all  the  surface 
appearance  of  attacking  prostitution,  men 
have  cherished  the  belief  that  prostitution  is 
necessary,  and  that  immorality  and  inconti- 
nence are  legitimate  for  them. 

The  true  cure  for  prostitution  consists  in 
this — the  strengthening  of  women,  and  the 
education  of  men. 

To  strengthen  women  means,  in  the  first 
place,  to  fill  them  with  a  higher  sense  of  their 
own  importance  as  the  transmitters  of  life. 


ii4    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Nature,  in  giving  to  women  the  chief  share 
in  continuing  the  race,  has  singled  them  out 
for  special  honour.  It  is  certainly  not  the 
less  developed  and  less  powerful  sex  to  whom 
the  great  task  of  maternity  has  been  entrusted. 
Their  capacity  for  maternity  is,  therefore, 
an  evidence  of  woman's  vitality  and  special 
human  worth.  If  only  for  this  reason,  women 
should  feel  a  special  pride  in  being  women. 
They  must,  and  they  do,  condemn  every  law 
and  custom  which  belittles  and  condemns  to 
social  and  political  inferiority  the  mother  sex 
to  which  they  belong. 

/-  In  short,  the  disfranchisement  of  women  is 
an  insult  to  motherhood,  which  can  no  longer 
be  tolerated.  Prostitution  is  to  be  condemned 
on  the  same  grounds.  This  is  so,  not  only  be- 
cause prostitution  makes  slaves  and  outcasts 
of  the  women  used  for  purposes  of  vice,  and 
degrades  their  high  sex  function,  but  also  be- 
cause the  further  effect  of  prostitution  is  to 
poison  men's  idea  of  the  sex-relationship, 


What  Women  TUuk  115 

even  where  all  the  other  women  are  concerned. 

And  again,  as  we  have  so  often  pointed  out, 
in  prostitution  is  bred  the  sexual  disease  which 
is  communicated  to  wives,  whose  health  and 
power  of  maternity  are  in  consequence  in- 
jured or  destroyed.  When  maternity  holds 
its  rightful  place  in  the  world's  regard  prosti- 
tution will  exist  no  more.  But  that  day  will 
not  come  until  women  are  valued  as  individ- 
uals and  as  human  beings,  and  not  merely  as 
sex  beings. 

The  idea  that  women  exist  only  for  race 
and  sex  purposes  is  held  by  a  great  many 
men  who  wish  to  be  considered  as  having  in 
view  the  interests  of  women  and  of  the  race, 
but  it  is  an  idea  that  is  very  largely  respon- 
sible for  prostitution  and  vice.  "If  women 
are  sex  beings  and  nothing  more/'  argue  the 
immoral  men,  "then  those  women  who  are  not 
occupied  with  child-bearing  are  fit  for  nothing 
more  than  to  satisfy  our  lust/' 

What  men,  including  eugenists  and  social 


n6     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

reformers  of  all  kinds,  must  realise,  is  this: 
The  power  of  maternity  is  something  which 
women  have  in  addition  to  their  other  powers. 
The  power  of  maternity  corresponds  with  the 
power  of  paternity,  and  not  to  some  other 
power  or  quality  in  men.  It  is  true  that  to 
give  birth  to  a  child  makes  a  great  demand 
upon  the  vitality  of  women,  but  the  answer 
to  that  is  that  the  vitality  is  hers,  given  to  her 
by  Nature  to  meet  the  need  of  that  vitality. 

The  belief  that  women  are  naturally  weak 
is  the  greatest  of  all  delusions.  It  is  true  that 
many  women's  strength  is  now,  owing  to  arti- 
ficial causes,  less  than  it  ought  naturally  to  be, 
but  these  artificial  causes  must  be  done  away 
with.  One  of  them  is,  as  we  have  already 
shown,  the  great  prevalence  of  sexual  dis- 
ease, which  directly  attacks  the  sexual  health 
and  vitality  of  women.  Want  of  exercise, 
unhygienic  dress,  and  other  such  circumstances 
contribute  to  make  a  great  many  women 
weaker  than  they  are  by  nature. 


What  Women  Think  117 

Yet,  even  as  things  are  to-day,  we  find 
women,  in  addition  to  bringing  children  into 
the  world,  doing  some  of  the  hardest  and  most 
unremitting  toil.  It  is  only  when  the  ques- 
tion of  wage-earning  arises,  or  when  women 
claim  the  right  to  be  active  in  the  higher  fields 
of  human  activity,  that  it  is  argued  that  ma- 
ternity unfits  them  for  equality  with  men. 

We  repeat,  then,  that  for  women  to  estab- 
lish their  freedom  and  equality  with  men, 
apart  from  any  question  of  maternity  and  sex, 
is  a  necessary  step  towards  the  abolition  of 
prostitution.  It  is  largely  because  men  have 
been  too  much  persuaded  of  women's  unlike- 
ness  to  themselves,  that  they  have  wanted  to 
put  and  keep  them  in  subjection  and  exploit 
them  for  purposes  of  vice.  For  the  abolition 
of  prostitution,  it  is  necessary  that  men  shall 
hold  women  in  honour,  not  only  as  mothers, 
but  as  human  beings,  who  are  like  and  equal 
to  themselves. 

Another  aspect  of  the  problem  is  economic. 


n8     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

More  and  more  women  are  becoming  per- 
suaded of  the  fact  that,  both  in  marriage  and 
out  of  it,  they  must  be  economically  inde- 
pendent, and  that  there  must  be  no  question 
of  living  by  the  sale  of  sex.  For  sex  is  de- 
graded by  any  hint  of  sale  or  barter. 

As  regards  the  unmarried  woman,  there 
must  be  a  security  that  she  can  live  by  selling 
the  work  of  her  hand  or  brain.  It  is  notori- 
ous that  an  enormous  percentage  of  white 
slaves  are  forced  into  slavery  by  economic 
pressure,  by  the  impossibility  of  earning  more 
than  a  starvation  wage,  or  by  the  impossibility 
of  earning  anything  at  all.  Women's  right  to 
work  and  to  live  by  her  work  is,  therefore,  one 
of  the  chief  points  in  their  charter  of  liberty. 

Nor  are  things  different  where  the  married 
woman  is  concerned.  The  fact  that  a  wife 
depends  upon  her  husband  for  the  necessities 
of  life  leads,  as  everybody  knows,  to  a  great 
deal  of  unhappiness  in  marriage.  Social  re- 
formers, who  attach  so  great  an  importance 


What  Women  Think  119 

to  the  economic  side  of  every  problem,  ought 
to  be  the  first  to  realise  that  in  the  reforming 
of  social  conditions  it  is  not  enough  to  put  the 
husband  in  possession  of  larger  means;  and 
that  to  every  adult  individual — man  or  woman, 
wife  or  maid — must  be  secured  economic  in- 
dependence. And  yet  it  is  often  they  who  up- 
hold the  reactionary  theory  that  married 
women  ought  not  to  be  economically  inde- 
pendent. 

The  system  under  which  a  married  woman 
must  derive  her  livelihood  from  her  husband 
— must  eat  out  of  his  hand,  as  it  were — is  a 
great  bulwark  of  sex-subjection,  and  is  a 
great  reinforcement  to  prostitution.  People 
are  led  to  reason  thus:  a  woman  who  is 
a  wife  is  one  who  has  made  a  permanent  sex- 
bargain  for  her  maintenance ;  the  woman  who 
is  not  married  may  therefore  make  a  tempo-  J 
rary  bargain  of  the  same  kind. 

It  is  not  as  though  a  married  woman  does 
not   earn  her   keep   by   the   work   she   does. 


i2o     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Here  are  some  of  the  vocations  which  married 
women  pursue:  cooking,  laundry- work,  dress- 
making, marketing,  mending,  scrubbing  and 
cleaning;  bathing,  dressing,  and  general  care 
of  infants,  house-manangement,  sick  nursing, 
social  entertaining,  husband's  career-making. 
This  varied  work,  if  done  by  unmarried 
women,  wins  a  money  return.  It  is  right, 
therefore,  that  a  married  woman  shall  get  the 
same  monetary  payment  for  her  work  as  is 
received  for  the  work  done  by  the  rest  of  the 
community.  Nor  is  it  enough,  to  solve  the 
problem  at  issue,  for  a  wife  to  have  a  legal 
claim  upon  a  share  of  her  husband's  earnings. 
That  may  work  well  enough  in  practice  where 
the  husband  is  possessed  of  large  means,  but 
in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  something  more 
than  that  is  needed.  Merely  to  give  a  woman 
half  her  husband's  earnings  is  to  make  one 
person's  wage  or  salary  meet  the  needs  of  two 
persons,  and  perhaps  of  a  family  into  the 
bargain.  By  way  of  illustration,  we  may 


What  Women  Think  121 

take  the  case  of  husband  and  wife  who  are 
both  doctors,  or  actors,  or  industrial  workers. 
Each  earns  an  independent  income,  and  both 
should  contribute  equally  to  the  maintenance 
of  the  family.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  wife 
is  earning  nothing,  then  the  family  circum- 
stances are  greatly  reduced,  and  the  wife  can 
never  be  in  the  same  sense  economically  inde- 
pendent. Co-operative  housekeeping,  which 
not  only  lightens  women's  work  by  organising 
it  and  scientifically  directing  it,  but  also  brings 
wage-earning  within  the  reach  of  every  wife 
without  impairing  domestic  comfort,  is  a  sys- 
tem to  be  heartily  encouraged  by  those  who 
desire  the  full  emancipation  of  women.  Of 
course,  married  people  will  always  be  free  to 
make  such  arrangements  as  suit  their  own 
case,  but  the  typical  marriage  will  in  days  to 
come  be  one  in  which  the  wife  is  economically 
independent. 

uf     More  important  than  everything  else  as  a 
means  of  strengthening  women's  position  is, 


122     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

I  of  course,  the  gain  of  the  Parliamentary  vote. 

/  The  vote  is  the  symbol  of  freedom  and  equal- 
ity. Any  class  which  is  denied  the  vote  is 

\  branded  as  an  inferior  class.  Women's  dis- 
franchisement  is  to  them  a  perpetual  lesson  in 
servility,  and  to  men  it  teaches  arrogance  and 
injustice  where  their  dealings  with  women  are 
concerned.  The  inferiority  of  women  is  a 
hideous  lie  which  has  been  enforced  by  law 
and  woven  into  the  British  Constitution,  and 
it  is  quite  hopeless  to  expect  reform  between 
the  relationship  of  the  sexes  until  women  are 
politically  enfranchised. 

Apart  from  the  deplorable  moral  effect  of 
the  fact  that  women  are  voteless,  there  is  this 
to  be  noticed — that  the  law  of  the  land,  as 
made  and  administered  by  men,  protects  and 
encourages  the  immorality  of  men  and  the  sex 
exploitation  of  women.  As  an  illustration  of 
this,  we  have  only  to  refer  to  the  Piccadilly 
Flat  Case,  in  which  male  offenders  were 
screened  from  punishment,  and  the  woman  who 


What  Women  Think  123 

had  ministered  to  their  vice  was  punished  so 
much  more  leniently  than  are  women  who  de- 
stroy property  for  the  sake  of  the  vote.  As  a 
further  illustration,  we  may  point  to  the 
bastardy  laws,  which  make  it  shamefully 
easy  for  a  man  to  escape  due  responsibility 
for  his  children  born  out  of  marriage,  and  the 
fact  that  the  law  does  not  protect  young  girls 
after  the  age  of  sixteen,  and  not  even  up  to 
that  age,  if  a  male  offender  against  a  girl 
pleads  that  he  thought  her  to  be  under  the  age 
of  consent.  The  unequal  divorce  laws  are 
another  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  a 
Parliament  elected  only  by  men  protects  the 
immorality  of  men.  The  scandalous  leniency 
shown  in  regard  to  assaults  upon  infant  girls 
provides  another  example  of  the  evil  caused 
by  the  outlawry  of  women. 

There  are  speeches,  pamphlets,  and  books 
by  the  hundred  on  "motherhood/'  "mother- 
craft,"  the  "ignorance  of  mothers,"  and  so 
forth.  What  women  think  is  that  the  public 


124     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

attention  ought  now  to  be  directed  less  to  the 
education  of  women  than  to  the  education  of 
men.  Fatherhood,  father-craft,  and  the  du- 
ties and  responsibilities  of  paternity  are,  or 
rather  ought  to  be,  the  question  of  the  day. 

There  are  men  who  urge  that  almost  before 
she  herself  leaves  the  cradle,  a  girl  should  be 
put  in  training  for  motherhood.  When,  and 
in  what  way,  a  girl's  mind  should  be  directed 
towards  motherhood  can  best  be  decided  by 
women  themselves.  What  men  ought  now  to 
do  is  to  train  the  young  of  their  own  sex. 
As  things  are  at  present  women  are  certainly 
more  fit  for  maternity  than  men  are  for 
paternity. 

We  have  already  said  that  if  men  were  con- 
scious of  their  paternal  duty  prostitution 
would  be  at  an  end,  because  by  intercourse 
with  prostitutes  a  man  endangers  his  own 
power  to  become  a  father,  endangers  the  health 
of  his  wife,  and  endangers  the  health  and 
sanity  of  his  offspring.  There  is  no  doubt 


What  Women  Think  125 

whatever  that  boys  at  a  very  early  age  ought 
to  be  taught  their  responsibility  to  the  next 
generation.  It  is  quite  futile  for  women  to 
prepare  themselves  for  motherhood  unless 
men  at  the  same  time  are  preparing  themselves 
for  fatherhood.  To  have  wise  and  healthy 
mothers  avails  little  if  there  are  not  also  wise 
and  healthy  fathers. 

One  of  the  lessons  that  men  have  to  learn 
is  that  their  sex  powers  are  given  to  them 
as  a  trust  to  be  used,  not  for  the  purposes  of 
immorality  and  debauchery,  but  to  be  used, 
reverently  and  in  a  union  based  on  love,  for\ 
the  purpose  of  carrying  on  the  race. 

The  Tightness  and  possibility,  and  the  im- 
perative necessity  of  an  equal  moral  standard 
fbr  men  and  women,  is  what  every  man  should 
be  taught  from  youth  upwards.  This  women 
think,  and  upon  this  women  will  more  and 
more  insist. 

They  will  be  told,  of  course,  as  they  have 
always  been  told  in  the  past,  that  an  equal 


126    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

moral  standard  for  men  and  women  is  an  im- 
possible dream.  Such  statements  have  lost 
all  their  power  to  deceive  women,  who  have 
by  this  time  taken  care  to  arm  themselves  with 
the  necessary  medical  knowledge.  Women 
know  that,  as  one  doctor  has  expressed  it, 
man's  physical  nature  is  accurately  adapted  to 
the  needs  of  his  moral  being,  and  that  the  rule 
of  chastity  observed  by  women  can  also  be  ob- 
served by  men  to  their  great  advantage  in 
point  of  health  and  vigour.  In  a  previous 
chapter,  called  "Chastity  and  the  Health  of 
Men,"  there  appears  the  testimony  of  many 
medical  men,  which  testimony  gives  over- 
whelming proof  that  prostitution  and  immor- 
ality are  not  in  accordance  with  Nature,  but 
are  a  violation  of  Nature's  laws.  Chastity 
and  continence  for  men  are  natural  and  health- 
ful; it  is  unchastity  and  incontinence  which 
destroy  men  morally  and  physically. 

Now  that  women  are  aware  of  these  facts, 
they  treat  with  contempt  the  gross  cant  about 


What  Women  Think  127 

men's  sexual  needs,  by  which  it  is  sought  to 
excuse  prostitution  and  vice.  The  truth  is 
that  the  desires  of  men  are  inflamed  to  an  un- 
natural degree  by  impure  thought  and  action, 
by  excess  in  the  way  of  meat  and  drink,  and 
by  physical  and  mental  indolence. 

Sexual  disease  is  also  responsible  for  exag- 
gerated sexual  desire.  It  is  most  important 
that  men  and  women  shall  have  a  knowl- 
edge of  this  fact,  which  is  brought  out  very 
clearly  in  the  following  quotation  from  the 
writings  of  James  Foster  Scott,  M.D.: 

"It  is  well  to  remember  that  at  certain  stages 
of  gonorrhoea  the  voluptuous  desires  of  some 
patients  are  inordinately  intensified.  The 
point  of  importance  in  this  connection  is  that 
a  most  dangerous  class  of  diseased  men,  with 
abnormally  strong  sexual  appetites,  are  going 
about  without  conscience,  supervision,  or  legal 
restraint,  and  using  these  very  women  whom 
so  many  men  feel  safe  in  patronising.  .  .  . 
Diseased  men  get  reckless  in  the  indulgence  of 


128     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

their  passions.  Not  only  have  they  lost  their 
morale,  strong  in  the  belief  that  there  is  little 
more  for  them  to  acquire,  but  also  the  inflam- 
mation in  the  deep  urethra  morbidly  stimulates 
their  passions,  so  that  these  men  are  most 
highly  dangerous  to  human  society,  being  in 
fact  poisonous  men  seeking  to  poison  others. 
Excessively  lustful,  and  governed  by  no  moral 
restraint,  they  actively  seek  to  gratify  their 
passions  at  the  expense  of  any  available  wo- 
man's health  and  life,  and  at  the  expense  of 
those  foolish  men  who  follow  in  their  tracks." 

When  it  is  reflected  that  from  75  to  80  per 
cent,  of  men  contract  gonorrhoea,  the  part 
which  this  disease  plays  in  connection  with  the 
problem  of  vice  is  obviously  a  very  large  one. 

The  truth  is  that,  owing  to  disease  and  other 
causes,  the  sex  desire  in  men  is  stronger  than 
is  warranted  by  the  interests  of  society. 
When  some  aspiration  towards  greater  liberty, 
and  towards  self-development  on  the  spiritual 
plane  is  concerned,  women  are  often  exhorted, 


What  Women  Think  129 

quite  unreasonably,  to  sacrifice  themselves  to 
the  supposed  interests  of  society  as  a  whole. 
Now,  with  great  reason,  men  are  called  upon, 
in  the  interest  of  themselves  and  of  women  and 
of  society  as  a  whole,  to  keep  their  desires  un- 
der due  control. 

The  excuses  offered  by  men  for  not  doing 
this  are  many  and  various.  Thus,  one  man 
makes  his  protest  in  the  name  of  art,  and  asks 
indignantly,  "Do  you  think  that  any  artistic 
manifestation  could  come  out  of  chastity  and 
normality?"  Now  it  is  very  natural  that  in- 
spiration should  come  through  a  union  which 
is  one  of  love,  but  that  vice  and  uncleanness 
are  a  way  to  inspiration,  is  a  fallacy  with 
which  M.  Jean  Finot  deals  very  trenchantly 
in  his  Problems  of  the  Sexes.  He  says: 
"How  many  great  minds,  irremediably  de- 
stroyed by  misguided  voluptuousness,  are  cut 
down  before  having  expended  for  the  human 
race  one-tenth  of  their  knowledge";  and  he 
quotes  Sainte-Beuve,  as  follows: 


130    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

"Who  shall  say  how,  in  a  great  city,  at  cer- 
tain hours  of  the  evening  and  the  night,  there 
are  periodically  exhausted  treasures  of  genius, 
of  beautiful  and  beneficent  works,  of  fruitful 
fancies?  One  in  whom,  under  rigid  conti- 
nence, a  sublime  creation  of  mind  was  about  to 
unfold,  will  miss  the  hour,  the  passage  of  the 
star,  the  kindling  moment  which  will  never- 
more be  found.  Another,  inclined  by  nature 
to  kindness,  to  charity,  and  to  a  charming 
tenderness,  will  become  cowardly,  inert,  or 
even  unfeeling.  This  character,  which  was 
almost  fixed,  will  be  dissipated  and  volatile." 

Art  is  creative.  Sexual  excess  is  a  waste 
of  man's  creative  energy. 

Another  grotesque  idea  which  men  have 
entertained,  is  that  by  immoral  life  they  excite 
the  admiration  of  women,  and  that  women 
think  immoral  conduct  "manly."  On  the  con- 
trary, women  think  it  altogether  unmanly  and 
contemptible.  Strength  and  cleanliness  and 
self-control — and  even  more  than  self-control, 


What  Women  TMnk  131 

a  mind  which  is  too  big  and  fine  to  harbour  im- 
moral ideas  and  intentions — are  what  women 
admire  in  men.  Women  are  in  agreement 
with  Forel,  who  says:  "Sexual  intercourse 
which  is  bought  and  sold  has  no  relation  to 
love.  As  a  mode  of  gratifying  the  sex  in- 
stinct it  stands  even  lower  in  the  moral  scale 
than  the  habit  of  self-abuse.  Prostitution  is 
a  hot-bed  of  sexual  vice  and  abnormal  prac- 
tices. By  its  means,  the  sexual  instinct  is  per- 
verted and  led  astray  into  every  imaginable 
bypath,  while  women  are  degraded  in  the 
basest  of  all  slaveries." 

Women  are  aware  that  excessive  sexuality, 
as  manifested  in  prostitution,  is  unnatural, 
and  that  it  leads  inevitably  to  other  unnatural 
practices.  Far  from  regarding  immorality  as 
manly,  women  regard  it  as  a  terrible  blemish 
upon  character — as  a  disqualification  for 
fatherhood,  a  disqualification  for  husband- 
hood. 

The  normal  woman  regards  the  sex  act  as 


132     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

the  final  pledge  of  her  faith  and  her  love.  The 
idea  that  her  husband  may  take  a  lower  view 
of  it  is  repulsive  to  her.  The  thought  that, 
before  or  after  his  marriage,  prostitution  can 
enter  his  mind  as  an  alternative  to  marriage, 
is  intolerable.  A  woman's  knowledge  of  psy- 
chology tells  her  that  a  man  who  is,  or  has 
been,  immoral  inevitably  has  his  sex  ideals 
,  tainted,  and  cannot  therefore  regard  marriage 
as  she  herself  regards  it.  Thus  the  black 
cloud  of  prostitution  necessarily  darkens  the 
legitimate  sex  union. 

Another  of  women's  thoughts  born  of  the 
more  developed  sense  of  comradeship  among 
women,  is  that  so  long  as  there  exists  a  huge 
class  of  slave  women,  the  more  fortunate 
women  cannot  live  peaceably  and  contentedly, 
as  though  all  were  well.  If  some  women  are 
corrupted  and  outcasts,  and  sacrificed  to  im- 
morality, this  concerns  all  women,  and  those 
who  are  responsible  must  be  called  to  ac- 
count. Besides,  as  we  have  seen,  womanhood 


What  Women  Think  133 

as  a  whole  suffers  in  health  and  happiness  as 
the  result  of  the  maltreatment  of  the  slave  class 
of  women. 

It  would  seem  that  certain  men  are  alarmed 
by  the  dangers  of  prostitution,  and,  of  course, 
they  find  it  expensive.  At  any  rate,  we  detect 
a  tendency  in  some  quarters  to  preach  to 
women  the  observance  of  a  looser  code  of 
morals  than  that  they  have  observed  hith- 
erto. "You  are  asking  for  political  freedom," 
women  are  told.  "More  important  to  you  is 
sex  freedom.  Votes  for  women  should  be  ac- 
companied, if  not  preceded,  by  wild  oats  for 
women.  The  thing  to  be  done  is  not  to  raise 
the  moral  standard  of  men,  but  to  lower  the 
moral  standard  of  women."  To  this  proposal 
the  women  reply  by  a  firm  and  unqualified 
negative.  Votes  they  certainly  intend  to  have, 
and  that  quickly,  but  they  know  too  well  what 
is  the  harvest  of  wild  oats,  and  having  that 
knowledge,  they  refuse  to  sow  any. 

When  the  women  have  the  vote,  they  will  be 


134    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

more  and  not  less  opposed  than  now  to  mak- 
ing a  plaything  of  sex  and  of  entering  casually 
into  the  sex  relationship. 

In  the  opinion  of  the  Suffragettes  sex  is  too 
big  and  too  sacred  a  thing  to  be  treated  lightly. 
Moreover,  both  the  physical  and  spiritual  con- 
sequences of  a  sex  union  are  so  important,  so 
far-reaching,  and  so  lasting,  that  intelligent 
and  independent  women  will  enter  into  such 
union  only  after  deep  consideration,  and  only 
when  a  great  love  and  a  great  confidence  are 
present. 

And  here  we  may,  perhaps,  deal  with  the 
statement  made  by  some  men,  that  women 
suffer  who  are  not  mated  with  men,  and  that 
what  they  are  pleased  to  term  "the  unsatis- 
fied desires"  of  women  are  a  problem.  Now, 
in  the  old  days  when  marriage  was  the  only 
career  open  to  women,  those  who  did  not 
marry  regarded  themselves,  and  were  re- 
garded, as  failures — just  as  a  lawyer  might 
who  never  got  a  brief,  as  a  doctor  might  who 


What  Women  Think  .135 

never  got  a  patient,  as  a  baker  might  who 
never  got  a  customer.  But  nowadays  the  un- 
married women  have  a  life  full  of  joy  and  in- 
terest. They  are  not  mothers  of  children  of 
their  flesh,  but  they  can  serve  humanity,  they 
can  do  work  that  is  useful  or  beautiful.  There- 
fore their  life  is  complete.  If  they  find  a  man 
worthy  of  them,  a  man  fit  physically  and 
morally  to  be  their  husband,  then  they  are 
ready  to  marry,  but  they  will  not  let  desire, 
apart  from  love  and  reason,  dominate  their 
life  or  dictate  their  action. 

It  is  very  often  said  to  women  that  their 
ideas  of  chastity  are  the  result  of  past  sub- 
jection. Supposing  that  were  so,  then  women 
have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  their 
subjection  has  brought  them  at  least  one  great 
gain — a  gain  they  will  not  surrender  when  the 
days  of  their  subjection  are  over.  The  mas- 
tery of  self  and  sex,  which  either  by  nature 
or  by  training  women  have,  they  will  not  yield 
up. 


136    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

Warned  by  the  evils  which  the  tyranny  of 
sex  has  produced  where  men  are  concerned, 
women  have  no  intention  of  letting  matter  tri- 
umph over  mind,  and  the  body  triumph  over 
the  spirit,  in  their  case. 

This  being  the  point  of  view  of  the  Suffra- 
gettes, the  most  modern  of  all  modern  women, 
it  will  be  seen  that  out  of  the  present  impasse 
in  sex  matters,  there  is  only  one  way — chastity 
for  men,  guaranteed  and  confirmed  by  the 
greater  independence  which  the  Vote  will  give 
to  women. 


APPENDIX 

THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE 
PICCADILLY  FLAT1 

IN  the  Piccadilly  Flat  Case,  with  its  foul 
revelations  and  its  still  fouler  concealments, 
is  summed  up  the  whole  case  against  Votes 
for  Women. 

The  Anti-Suffragist  theory  of  life  and  of  the 
position  of  women  leads  straight  to  the  hid- 
eous state  of  affairs  of  which  the  Flat  Case 
is  an  illustration. 

The  Anti-Suffragist  believes  that  women 
are  of  value  only  because  of  their  sex  func- 
tions, which  functions  he  also  believes  are  to 
be  used  at  the  orders  and  in  the  service  of  men. 

1The  Piccadilly  Flat  was  a  house  of  ill- fame.  The  nomi- 
nal head  of  it,  a  woman,  was  sent  to  prison  for  three  months 
in  the  Second  Division.  The  men  who  had  acted  in  co- 
operation with  her  were  not  punished,  and  their  names  were 
kept  from  public  knowledge. 

137 


138     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

To  state  the  same  thing  in  other  words,  the 
Anti-Suffragist  man  regards  women  as  a  sub- 
ject sex  created  entirely  for  sex  uses.  Inci- 
dentally he  expects  woman  to  act  as  unpaid 
domestic  servant;  or,  if  he  is  rich,  to  promote 
his  individual  interests  in  society  or  politics; 
and  he  is  not  unwilling  that  she  shall  work  in 
his  factory  at  a  starvation  wage,  unless  he  can 
find  machinery  to  do  the  same  work  more 
cheaply. 

As  he  does  not  hesitate  to  tell  her,  the 
Anti-Suffragist  is  of  opinion  that  apart  from 
her  sex  activity  the  world  would  get  on  quite 
well  without  her.  He  does  not  realise  that 
the  same  thing  might  at  least  as  truly  be  said 
of  men  by  women. 

We  repeat  that  the  Anti-Suffragists  see  in 
woman,  sex  and  nothing  more.  Women  they 
hold  to  be  solely  and  simply  females — a  sub- 
human species  useful  in  so  far  as  female,  but 
not  otherwise.  These  females  they  divide  into 
two  classes.  Those  belonging  to  the  first  class 


The  Truth  About  Piccadilly  Flat     139 

are  expected  to  give  birth  to  legitimate  chil- 
dren. They  are  not  recognised  by  the  law  as 
"persons,"  and  they  are  not  recognised  as 
legal  parents  of  their  own  children.  They  are 
called  "wives."  The  second  class  inhabit  Pic- 
cadilly Flats  and  other  similar  resorts.  They 
are  called  "prostitutes."  They  are  used  for 
the  physical  satisfaction  of  men.  In  a  short 
time  they  become  diseased  and  ugly  and  unfit 
for  use,  and  that  is  the  end  of  them!  Their 
ranks  are  constantly  recruited  as  a  result  of 
the  starvation  wages  paid  for  honest  work, 
and  by  means  of  fraudulent  advertisements, 
bogus  marriages,  kidnapping,  and  other  tricks. 
In  addition  to  the  wives  who  are  neither 
persons  nor  parents,  and  in  addition  to  the 
prostitutes,  there  are  other  women  who  are 
described  by  the  Anti-Suffragists  as  "super- 
fluous women."  Wives  are  needed,  think  the 
Anti-Suffragists,  because  some  men,  at  any 
rate,  may  decide  to  have  a  home  and  family. 
Prostitutes  are  needed  because  of  that  exag- 


140    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

gerated  development  of  the  sex  instinct  which 
is  supposed  to  be  natural  where  men  are  con- 
cerned. For  the  rest  of  womenkind  the  Anti- 
Suffragist  sees  no  use  at  all.  In  fact,  he  has 
a  peculiar  fear  and  horror  of  them. 

The  demand  for  Votes  for  Women  means  a 
revolt  against  wrongs  of  many  kinds — against 
social  injustice  and  political  mismanagement 
as  they  affect  both  men  and  women.  But 
more  than  all  it  is  a  revolt  against  the  evil 
system  under  which  women  are  regarded  as 
sub-human  and  as  the  sex-slaves  of  men. 
In  short,  as  we  have  already  stated,  the  de- 
mand for  Votes  for  Women  is  an  attack  upon 
everything  that  is  represented  by  the  Picca- 
dilly Flat  Case. 

The  facts  in  that  case  are  not  rare  and  ex- 
ceptional. There  are  many  such  flats.  There 
are  many  such  women  as  those  who  were  its 
inmates.  There  are  thousands  upon  thousands 
of  men  such  as  those  who  frequented  it. 
Numbers  of  these  men  are  "respectable"  hus- 


The  Truth  About  Piccadilly  Flat     141 

bands  and  fathers.  They  pretend  that  after 
visiting  such  places  they  are  morally  and  phy- 
sically fit  to  return  to  their  homes  and  to  asso- 
ciate with  their  clean-minded  and  clean-living 
wife  and  daughters. 

Let  us  take  the  facts  as  disclosed  in  the  well- 
nigh  secret  proceedings  at  the  Clerkenwell 
Sessions.  The  girls  who  were  found  in  the 
flat  were  little  more  than  children.  If  the  age 
of  consent  were  21 — as  it  ought  to  be,  seeing 
that  a  girl's  property  is  protected  till  she  is  21 
— if  it  were  even  18,  the  very  fact  of  having 
immoral  intercourse  with  them  would  have 
made  the  men  visiting  the  flat  liable  to  im- 
prisonment. One  of  the  girls  is  now  only  17 
years  of  age,  and  it  is  several  months  since  her 
connection  with  the  flat  first  began.  Another 
is  not  much  more  than  18.  Their  "extreme 
obvious  youth,"  as  it  was  described  in  court, 
was,  however,  a  positive  advantage  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  "gentlemen"  ("gentle- 
men" was  the  term  employed  throughout  the 


142     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

case)  who  were  customers  at  the  flat.  These 
British  husbands  and  fathers  had,  some  of 
them,  asked  in  writing  that  their  victims  should 
be  innocent  young  girls ! 

All  evidence  as  to  how  and  when  these  un- 
happy children  were  ruined  in  the  first  instance 
was  withheld  from  the  court.  But  the  infer- 
ence is  that  a  male  frequenter  of  the  flat  was 
responsible,  at  any  rate  in  one  case. 

The  newspaper  accounts  of  the  matter, 
scanty  as  these  were,  are  enough  to  show  that 
this  flat  was  a  veritable  den  of  iniquity,  and 
one  of  the  lawyers  admitted  as  much  when  he 
said  "that  all  sorts  of  practices  were  carried  on 
there,  and  indeed  the  girls  say  that  they  were 
resorted  to,  and  the  instruments  that  were 
found  were  in  fact  used  there." 

The  men  patrons  of  the  Piccadilly  Flat, 
after  their  share  in  degrading  young  girls, 
after  wading  through  physical  and  moral  filth, 
went  home,  and  doubtless  forbade  any  "med- 
dling with  the  Suffrage  question."  This  pro- 


The  Truth  About  Piccadilly  Flat     143 

hibition,  we  may  be  sure,  was  supplemented  by 
an  attack  upon  the  methods  of  the  Suffra- 
gettes, and  a  statement  concerning  the  means 
that  ought  to  be  adopted  to  suppress  these  mili- 
tant women.  Heaven  help  and  pity  the  wife  of 
such  a  man!  She  is  put  in  danger  of  acquir- 
ing loathsome  disease,  and  the  marriage  into 
which  she  entered  in  love  and  trust  is  dese- 
crated. 

The  majority  of  women  do  not  want  the 
vote,  people  say.  If  that  be  true  it  is  because 
so  many  women  do  not  even  yet  know  the  facts 
about  their  own  position.  But  day  by  day  they 
are  learning  the  truth,  and  the  number  of  Suf- 
fragists is  growing  in  consequence.  The  Anti- 
Suffragist  forces  have  done  their  best  to  keep 
the  truth  hidden,  but  now  they  are,  in  spite  of 
themselves,  helping  to  make  it  known.  The 
Piccadilly  Flat  Case  is  an  instance  of  this. 
The  conniving  of  men  with  men  to  keep  the 
facts  of  this  case  concealed  from  them — that 
has  been  to  women  a  great  revelation.  Here, 


144    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

they  plainly  see,  is  a  matter  which  concerns  a 
great  many  men,  and  concerns  also  some  who 
hold  very  high  positions.  Only  men  of  great 
influence  and  power  would  have  been  success- 
ful in  getting  the  assent  of  the  authorities  to 
hush  up  this  case.  And  even  then,  unless  it 
had  been  a  whole  system,  and  not  an  isolated 
and  exceptional  matter  that  was  involved,  this 
hushing  up  could  not  have  been  achieved. 
Everybody  knows  that  important  men  were 
supporting  the  Piccadilly  flat.  A  great  many 
people  know  who  these  men  are. 

These  are  the  questions  which  women  are 
asking:  Why  were  women  kept  out  of  the 
police  court  when  this  case  was  being  more 
fully  investigated  than  it  was  in  the  final, 
hushed-up  trial  ?  Why  were  no  men  punished, 
although  evidence  against  them  was  in  the 
hands  of  the  police?  Was  this  because  there 
is  truth  in  the  rumour  that  a  man  very  promi- 
nent in  political  and  social  life  is  implicated? 
Why  was  the  defendant  in  this  case  put  in  the 


The  Truth  About  Piccadilly  Flat     145 

Second  Division,  while  Miss  Annie  Kenney  and 
her  fellow-conspirators  were  put  in  the  Third 
Division?  Why  was  she  given  a  sentence  of 
only  three  months'  imprisonment,  while  Mrs. 
Pankhurst  was  sent  to  three  years'  imprison- 
ment? 

The  leniency  shown  to  this  woman,  who  has 
not  merely  destroyed  property,  but  has  traf- 
ficked in  flesh  and  blood,  is  very  remarkable 
when  contrasted  with  the  severity  shown  to 
Suffragettes.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  Queenie 
Gerald  and  all  others  engaged  in  the  same 
dreadful  trade  will  interpret  this  leniency. 
They  will  believe  that  men  wish  them  to  read 
into  it  the  following  message : 

"We  must  for  the  sake  of  appearances  send 
you  to  prison  occasionally.  But  you  shall  not 
stay  there  very  long,  and  you  shall  not  be  too 
uncomfortable  while  you  are  there.  This  lit- 
tle interlude  in  the  pursuit  of  your  lucrative 
occupation  will  not,  we  hope,  deter  you,  or 
discourage  you  and  your  fellow-traders  from 


146     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

carrying  on  the  business  in  future.  We  re- 
gard you  and  your  trade  as  necessary  institu- 
tions, and  as  a  source  of  great  gratification  to 


us." 


The  Piccadilly  Flat  Case  shows  the  enemies 
of  Women's  Emancipation  hiding,  like  the  os- 
trich, with  their  heads  in  the  sand.  If  this 
case  had  been  fairly  and  squarely  fought  out 
before  the  public,  women's  suspicions  would 
have  been  less  aroused.  As  it  is,  they  have 
been  put  thoroughly  on  the  alert.  They  are 
wanting  to  know  how  many  more  of  these 
plague-spots  London  contains — for  plague- 
spots  they  are,  spiritually  and  physically. 

In  these  places  men's  ideas  about  women 
become  tainted,  and  there  arise  diseases  which 
are  handed  on  to  healthy  and  unsuspecting 
wives  and  innocent  children. 

Why  should  this  be,  and  what  is  the  justi- 
fication x of  it?  As  we  have  said,  women's 
suspicions  are  aroused.  The  venom  and  ob- 
stinacy with  which  their  demand  for  the  vote 


The  Truth  About  Piccadilly  Flat     147 

is  being  resisted  is  to  them  a  warning  that  there 
is  more  in  this  question  than  even  they  them- 
selves suspected  at  the  beginning.  All  over 
the  world  it  is  vice  that  finds  its  interest  in  the 
subjection  of  women,  and  this  is  so  in  our  own 
country  no  less  than  in  every  other. 

Let  all  women  who  want  to  see  humanity 
no  longer  degraded  by  impure  thought  and 
physical  disease  come  into  the  ranks  of  the 
Women's  Social  and  Political  Union,  and  help 
to  win  the  Vote] 


THE  GOVERNMENT  AND  WHITE 
SLAVERY 

No  wonder  the  Government  resist  the  en- 
franchisement of  women !  The  reason  of  their 
Anti-Suffrage  policy  is  plain.  We  should  as 
soon  expect  the  White  Slave  traders  to  welcome 
Votes  for  Women,  as  we  should  expect  the 
Government  to  welcome  that  reform. 

The  fact  is  that  the  Government  are  them- 
selves White  Slavemongers  and  upholders  of 
vice.  That  is  why  they  dare  not  meet  the  judg- 
ment of  women  voters. 

That  the  Government  are  bad  employers, 
and  are  thus  responsible  for  driving  women 
into  slavery,  is  a  notorious  fact.  Working 
women  have  no  power  to  elect  Members  of  Par- 
liament, and  so  cannot  get  the  protection  of  an 
adequate  fair  wage  clause  such  as  working 

men,  through  their  votes,  can  obtain.     Sweat- 

148 


The  Government  and  White  Slavery    149 

ing  is,  therefore,  rampant  in  connection  with 
the  employment  of  women  on  Government  con- 
tracts. But  that  is  not  all,  and  that  is  not  the 
worst. 

The  Government  are  directly  responsible  for 
a  large  measure  of  White  Slavery.  They  are, 
in  effect  procurers  of  women  for  the  vicious 
pleasures  of  men  in  the  Army  and  Navy. 

The  state  of  affairs  in  India  is  thus  described 
by  the  Friends'  Association  for  Abolishing 
State  Regulation  of  Vice : 

"The  following  system  is  now  in  existence 
practically  throughout  the  Indian  cantonments 
— the  permanent  military  stations: 

"i.  Certain  houses,  set  aside  for  immoral 
purposes,  are  definitely  permitted  by  the  local 
authorities  of  the  Government  of  India  in  the 
cantonments,  with  the  understanding  that  the 
keepers  of  these  houses  will  abide  by  the  regula- 
tions of  the  Cantonment  Code. 

"2.  When  a  British  soldier  is  found  by  the 
medical  officer  of  the  regiment  to  be  suffering 


ISO    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

from  disease  caused  by  vice,  he  is  questioned 
as  to  the  supposed  origin  of  that  disease,  and 
if  the  woman  accused  lives  in  one  of  these 
houses,  she  is  forthwith  surgically  examined 
by  the  medical  officer,  and,  if  found  diseased, 
is  turned  out  of  the  house,  with  the  choice  of 
either  leaving  the  cantonments  or  of  proceeding 
to  the  Voluntary'  hospital  belonging  to  the 
Government.  She  is  not  allowed  to  return  to 
her  original  residence  until  discharged  from 
the  hospital  in  a  supposedly  'fit'  state  to  resume 
her  former  occupation. 

"Under  such  regulations  the  British  Gov- 
ernment does  that  which  no  Government  ought 
to  do,  gives  a  vested  interest  in  houses  of  this 
kind.  The  occupation  of  a  keeper  of  a  house 
of  ill-fame,  under  such  circumstances,  is  ab- 
solutely legalised.  This  tends  greatly  to  the 
slavery  of  the  women  occupying  such  houses. 

"From  a  purely  medical  point  of  view,  un- 
der such  a  system,  the  Government  affords  a 
false  security,  and  holds  out  a  wrecker's  light 


The  Government  and  White  Slavery     151 

to  men  frequenting  such  houses.  The  impos- 
sibility of  the  avoidance  of  the  malady,  except 
by  avoidance  of  its  cause,  is  becoming  more 
and  more  recognised  by  experts." 

Many  of  the  White  Slaves  of  these  brothels, 
sanctioned  and  supervised  by  the  Government, 
are,  it  is  said,  mere  children.  How  are  they 
obtained,  and  what  happens  to  them  when  they 
become  hopelessly  diseased  and  thus  "unfit  for 
use"  by  the  officers  and  soldiers? 

The  British  Committee  of  the  International 
Federation  for  the  Abolition  of  the  State  Reg- 
ulation of  Vice  have  lately  had  a  correspond- 
ence with  the  India  Office,  in  which  they  have 
urged  in  vain  that  the  present  infamous  sys- 
tem shall  be  ended. 

The  Government's  infamous  conduct  where 
the  womanhood  of  India  is  concerned  has  only 
to  be  known  to  make  British  women  more  de- 
termined than  ever  to  win  the  vote.  Under 
the  rule  of  men,  Indian  women  have  been  and 
are  being  enslaved,  degraded,  destroyed. 


152     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

These  awful  wrongs  are  being  visited  upon 
innocent  women  and  children  in  the  mother 
country.  Many  soldiers  return  from  India 
diseased,  and  they  infect  their  unhappy  wife 
and  offspring. 

The  evil  is  stated  by  the  Friends'  Society 
for  Abolishing  State  Regulation  of  Vice  in 
the  following  terms: 

"There  are  now  70,000  young  Englishmen, 
soldiers,  stationed  in  these  cantonments. 
They  are  sent  out  from  this  country  at  the 
rate  of  13,000  every  year,  and  after  five  years 
of  education  in  the  principles  of  State-sanc- 
tioned vice,  they  are  sent  back  to  this  country 
at  the  same  rate,  less  the  number  of  deaths, 
and,  their  time  being  expired,  are  scattered  all 
over  the  towns  and  villages  of  the  land,  there 
to  spread  the  leaven  of  this  teaching.  Fur- 
ther than  that,  Indian  officers  who  have  served 
on  these  Cantonment  Committees,  when  they 
come  back  to  England,  in  large  numbers  of 
cases  become  members  of  various  public  bod- 


The  Government  and  White  Slavery     153 

ies,  up  to  Parliament  itself,  and  so  form  a 
leaven  in  the  ruling  circles  of  Society,  similar 
to  that  set  at  work  by  their  subordinates 
amongst  the  mass  of  the  population." 

If  all  women  realised  these  facts  more 
plainly  there  would  be  no  Anti-Suffragists  left. 
We  doubt  whether  there  would  be  left  even 
Anti-Militants ! 

Let  women  consider  the  words  of  an  ex- 
official  who  for  many  years  had  charge  of  the 
Government  chaklas  or  brothels.  Said  he  to 
Dr.  Louisa  Martindale,  author  of  Under  the 
Surface: 

"I  cannot  speak  too  strongly  against  them. 
Many  a  young  boy  or  man  comes  out  to  India 
pure  and  good.  It  is  the  presence  of  the  Gov- 
ernment chaklas  that  first  put  it  into  his  head 
to  lead  a  vicious  life.  Many  resist  for  a  time, 
but  when  they  see  their  friends  and  their  su- 
perior officers  making  use  of  these,  and  when 
they  are  given  to  understand  that  the  medical 
inspection  makes  it  safe  for  them  to  go,  sooner 


154    Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

or  later  they  give  way  and  follow  the  example 
of  the  rest.  But  to  start  with — they  don't 
want  it." 

Miss  Elizabeth  Robins  in  her  book,  Where 
Are  You  Going  to?  makes  a  charge  against 
the  naval  authorities  to  which  no  answer 
has  been  forthcoming.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  the  sister  of  little  Bettina,  who  is 
swept  innocent  and  unsuspecting  into  the 
whirlpool  of  vice,  is  herself  saved  by  a  man 
who  tells  her  of  the  real  nature  of  the  house 
into  which  she  and  Bettina  have  been  en- 
trapped. In  order  to  enlighten  her,  he  tells 
her  of  how  the  very  Government  of  the  coun- 
try fosters  and  encourages  vice.  Into  the 
mouth  of  this  man  Miss  Robins  puts  her 
charge  against  the  naval  authorities.  First 
she  refers  to  the  case  of  India.  She  makes 
the  man  say: 

"Take  India — I've  been  there.  I  know  an 
official  who  had  charge  of  the  chaklas.  You 
don't  know  what  chaklas  are?  Your  father 


The  Government  and  White  Slavery  .155 

knew.  If  you'd  gone  riding  round  the  canton- 
ments you'd  have  seen.  Little  groups  of  tents. 
A  hospital  not  far  off.  Women  in  the  tents. 
Out  there  it's  no  secret.  They're  called 
'Government  women.1  The  women  are  needed 
by  the  Army.  So  there  you  are." 

Then  the  indictment  runs  on : 

"Even  Governments  (he  said)  had  to  recog- 
nise human  nature  and  shape  their  policies  ac- 
cordingly. I  was  too  young  to  remember  all 
that  talk  in  the  Press  some  years  ago  about  the 
mysterious  movements  of  British  battleships 
in  the  Mediterranean.  Instead  of  hanging 
about  Malta  the  ships  had  gone  cruising  round 
the  Irish  coast.  Why?  The  officials  said, 
'For  good  and  sufficient  reasons.'  The  chorus 
of  criticism  died  down.  The  'reasons'  were 
known  to  those  who  had  to  know.  Not  enough 
women  at  Malta.  The  British  fleet  spent 
some  time  about  the  Irish  coasts.  'Human  na- 
ture!'" 

So  a  Government  who  have  nothing  but  in- 


156     Plain  Facts  About  a  Great  Evil 

suit,  treachery,  and  torture  for  women  are 
ready  to  minister  to  the  vices  of  men. 

The  soldiers  and  sailors  may  ask  for 
healthier  quarters  or  higher  pay,  and  these 
things  may  be  denied  to  them  because  they 
cost  money;  but  their  vices  the  Government 
are  quite  willing  to  encourage  because  they 
cost  nothing  more  than  the  slavery,  disease, 
and  death  of  women. 

The  Government  may  defend  themselves  by 
saying  that  vice  is  indispensable  for  health  rea- 
sons. Then  we  ask  them  this  question: 

"You  have  in  addition  to  soldiers  and  sailors 
one  other  class  of  men  under  your  control. 
They  are  the  men  locked  up  in  prisons,  some 
of  them  for  a  long  term  of  years.  Do  you 
provide  Government  women  for  men  prison- 
ers?" 

This  inquiry  goes  to  the  very  root  of  the 
matter,  as  a  little  consideration  will  show. 
Since  every  medical  man  of  reputation  asserts 
that  continence  is  healthful  and  that  inconti- 


The  Government  and  White  Slavery  .157 

nence  and  prostitution  are  destructive  of 
health,  the  Government's  dealings  in  White 
Slavery  and  their  encouragement  of  vice  can- 
not be  justified  on  medical  grounds. 


THE  END 


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DO  YOU  KNOW  THAT 

"There  are  now  scattered  throughout  practically  every  sec- 
tion of  the  United  States  a  vast  number  of  men  and  women 
whose  sole  occupation  consists  in  enticing,  tricking,  or  coercing 
young  women  and  girls  into  immoral  lives? 

"Their  business  methods  have  been  so  far  developed  and  per- 
fected that  they  seem  to  be  able  to  ensnare  almost  any  woman 
or  girl  whom  they  select  for  the  purpose? 

"  It  is  estimated  that  not  less  than  25,000  young  women  and 
girls  are  annually  procured  for  this  traffic,  and  that  no  less  than 
50,000  men  and  women  are  engaged  in  procuring  and  HvLtg 
on  the  earnings  of  these  women  and  girls?" 

From  address,  May  7,  1912,  by  Stanley  W.  Finch,  Special 
Commissioner  for  the  Suppression  of  the  White  Slave  Traffic, 
U.  S.  Department  of  Justice. 

PEACH    BLOOM 

An  American  Play  in  Four  Acts 
BY  NORTHROP   MORSE 

A  powerful  play  written  to  arouse  all  earnest  people  to  the 
peril  of  ignorance  in  girls. 

"This  play,  Peach  Bloom,  has  an  exaltation  of  purity  about 
it  ...  is  as  strong  a  play,  as  effective,  and  as  unobjectionably 
purposeful  as  could  be  written  on  the  subject" — William  T. 
Price,  Editor  of  the  "American  Playwright." 

"Without  doubt  the  best  thing  of  its  kind  that  we  have  seen 
here.  .  .  ,  Your  play  combines  an  accurate  picture  of  condi- 
tions with  intense  dramatic  interest,  and  yet  does  not  in  any 
way  go  into  melodrama," — Marion  E.  Dodd,  Former  Director 
of  the  Library  and  Editorial  Department  of  the  American  Vigi- 
lance Association." 

"A  great  play." — John  Court,  N.  Y.  Manager  and  Producer. 

Cloth  Bound,  $1.00  Postpaid 

PUBLISHED  BY 
THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  FUND  OF  THE 

MEDICAL  REVIEW  OF  REVIEWS 

206  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY 


The  Book  Quoted  by  Miss  Pankhurst 
as  an  Authority. 

THE 

SEXUAL  INSTINCT 

ITS  USE  AND  DANGERS  AS  AFFECTING 

HEREDITY  AND  MORALS 
BY  JAMES   FOSTER   SCOTT,  A.B.    (Yale),  M.D., 

CM.  (Edinburgh).  Late  Obstetrician  to  Columbia  Hos- 
pital for  Women,  and  Lying-in  Asylum,  Washington,  D.  C. ; 
late  Vice-President  of  the  Medical  Association  of  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia,  etc.,  etc. 

FROM  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE— This  book  con- 
tains much  plain  talking,  for  which  I  offer  no  defence. 
Its  justification  will  be  found  in  the  body  of  the  work, 
designed  to  furnish  the  non-professional  man  with  a 
sufficiently  thorough  knowledge  of  matters  pertaining  to 
the  sexual  sphere — knowledge  which  he  cannot  afford 
to  be  without. 

Scranton  Tribune  says: — "The  subject-matter  of  his  book 
does  not  admit  of  detailed  review  in  a  secular  newspaper,  but 
we  may  say  that  nowhere  have  we  seen  a  more  honorable  or 
judicious  treatment  of  this  important  topic.  The  author  is 
frank,  candid  and  unsparing." 

Medical  Record,  New  York,  says:— "The  subject  is  handled 
fearlessly  and  in  a  straightforward  manner,  which  must  appeal 
to  all  lovers  of  truth." 

Denver  Post  says: — "The  author  has  shown  a  rare  discre- 
tion and  tact  in  handling  the  subjects  considered.  The  lan- 
guage is  delicate,  and  the  book  throughout  is  marked  by  good 
taste  and  sound  judgment." 

New  York  Medical  Journal  says : — "  There  are  probably  few 
subjects  more  deserving  of  frank  scientific  discussion  than  the 
facts  and  obligations  of  sexual  life.  These  topics  are  boldly 
but  clearly  discussed  by  the  author  for  the  benefit  of  lay 
readers,  particularly  of  adult  men,  among  whom,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  the  book  will  have  a  circulation  proportionate  to  its 
merit  and  importance." 

2d  Edition,  8vo,   474  page*,  Illustrated,   Cloth,  Prepaid  $2.00 

E.  B.  TREAT  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 

241  A  West  23d  Street  NEW  YORK 


Never-Told  Tales 

By  WILLIAM  J.   ROBINSON,  M.  D. 

The  first  book  published  under  the  auspices 

of   The  Sociological  Fund   of  the 

Medical  Review  of  Reviews. 

DR.  WILLIAM  J.  ROBINSON  was  among  the  first 
pioneers  in  this  country  to  preach  and  demand 
sexual  enlightenment  for  the  masses.  At  a 
time  when  to  discuss  sexual  subjects  even  at  medical 
meetings  was  considered  improper  and  undignified, 
when  to  give  to  the  laity  information  on  the  physiol- 
ogy and  pathology  of  sex  was  considered  almost 
criminal,  Dr.  Robinson  did  both.  By  his  persistent, 
tho  non-spectacular  work,  by  his  numerous  editorials 
and  articles  in  his  own  and  other  journals,  by  his 
speeches  and  debates,  he  caused  a  marked,  change 
in  the  attitude  of  the  medical  profession  and  of  the 
press,  both  lay  and  medical. 

fl"  It  was  largely  due  to  his  influence  that  the  silence 
which  for  centuries  surrounded  all  sexual  subjects 
like  a  thick,  inpenetrable  shroud,  was  finally  broken  ; 
and  the  people  began  to  learn  the  truth  which  con- 
cerned not  only  their  health  but  their  very  life. 

t)f  In  the  first  years  of  his  practice,  Dr.  Robinson  saw 
the  terrible  tragedies  which  were  caused  by  ignorance, 
ignorance  on  the  part  of  man  and  still  greater  igno- 
rance on  the  part  of  woman.  He  was  struck  by  the 
deplorable  fact  that  the  most  important  physiological 
function,  the  function  on  which  the  very  perpetuation 
of  the  race  depended,  was  shrouded  in  the  deepest 
darkness,  and  nobody  seemed  brave  enough  to  dare 
lift  the  veil. 


^f  It  was  heart-breaking  to  see  how  much  misery 
could  have  been  avoided,  and  readily  avoided,  by  a 
little  knowledge  at  the  proper  time.  The  tragedies 
he  witnessed  he  crystallized  in  his  now  famous  NEVER- 
TOLD  TALES,  which  was  the  first  book  in  the  English 
language  to  present  in  the  form  of  short  stories  the 
disastrous  results  of  sexual  ignorance,  of  sexual  dis- 
orders, of  too  many  children  among  the  poor,  etc.  It 
instructed  and  warned  long  before  "  Damaged  Goods  " 
was  heard  of  in  this  country. 

^1F  The  Sociological  Fund  of  the  Medical  Review  of 
Reviews  considers  Dr.  Robinson's  NEVER- TOLD 
TALES  one  of  the  most  important  books  in  the  sex 
hygiene  propaganda,  in  the  crusade  for  honest,  non- 
prurient  sexual  enlightenment,  and  has  selected  it  as 
the  first  book  to  be  published  and  spread  under  its 
auspices.  It  is  a  book,  which  if  put  into  the  hands  of 
the  adolescent,  would  prevent  great  and  frequent  trag- 
edies. It  is  the  duty  of  parents  and  of  all  young 
people  contemplating  marriage  to  read  the  book  and 
to  consider  its  lessons. 

Price  $1.00,  postpaid 

THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  FUND 

OF  THE  MEDICAL  REVIEW  OF  REVIEWS 

206  BROADWAY 

NEW  YORK 


A  Few  Expressions  of  Opinion 

"The  most  important  book  that  we  have  ever 
read  on  the  sex  question." — American  Journal  of 
Eugenics. 

"  Never-  Told  Tales  contains  a  serious  warning  for 
all  people,  and  especially  for  those  about  to  enter  upon 
the  responsibilities  of  marriage." — EDWIN  MARKHAM 
in  N.  Y.  American . 


"The  manner  in  which  the  stories  are  told  grips 
one's  attention  and  memory  as  no  abstract  statement 
can  do.  They  are  remarkable.  If  every  young  man  and 
young  woman  had  the  knowledge  they  represent,  our 
commonwealths  would  approach  much  more  nearly 
that  ideal  canton  in  Switzerland  of  which  Dr.  Robin- 
son tells." — Archives  of  Pediatrics. 


11  If  you  want  first-hand  information  right  from  the 
inside  facts  in  the  hands  of  a  doctor  regarding  the 
creeping,  crawling,  slimy  monster  we  call  Sexual 
Disease,  a  serpent  which  has  entered  the  homes, 
brought  suffering,  loathsome  disease  and  life-long 
invalidism  to  countless  young  women  who  have 
married  men  who  have  sown  their  oats  and  reaped  an 
abundant  harvest,  if  you  want  the  Truth  as  it  is  seldom 
presented  to  the  public,  you  will  get  this  book. 

"The  writer  has  seen  young  girls  converted  into 
pitiful,  barren  wrecks,  households  made  desolate,  chil- 
dren born  into  the  world  puny,  crippled,  blind  and 
noseless ;  he  has  seen  many  terrible  things  which  are 
unmentionable,  all  brought  about  not  by  the  wicked- 
ness, but  by  the  ignorance  of  the  men  and  women 
entering  the  marriage  relations,  all  of  which  could 
have  been  prevented  if  these  tales  had  been  told  before. 


"Only  a  few  years  ago  Anthony  Comstock  rail, 
roaded  a  doctor  to  prison  for  publishing  exactly  the 
same  information  this  book  contains.  The  world  do 
move,  Sexual  truths  will  be  told.  The  young  will  not 
be  allowed  to  forever  sin  away  health,  strength  and 
life  without  being  told  the  truth  of  the  sexual  compact. 
We  welcome  the  book." — Good  Health  Clinic. 


"  These  tales  should  be  told  over  and  over.  If  you 
are  a  father  or  a  mother  with  boys  and  girls,  or  if 
you  are  a  young  man  or  young  woman  about  to  get 
married,  this  book  will  be  of  great  profit  and  benefit. 
Many  a  heartache  would  be  avoided  and  many  a 
disappointed  life  would  be  encouraged  if  this  book 
could  be  read.  It  is  a  book  worth  many  times  its 
price." — Oregon  Mining  and  Timber  Journal. 


FROM  ONE  OF  AMERICA'S  MOST  EMINENT 

AUTHORS 
DEAR  DR.  ROBINSON  : 

"  My  wife  and  I  are  off  on  a  cruise  and  duck-hunt- 
ing trip,  on  a  small  yacht,  and  at  the  present  moment 
are  lying  against  the  bank,  up  the  Sacramento  River. 
She  is  writing  this  on  the  typewriter  at  my  dictation. 
I  cannot  begin  to  tell  you  how  I  appreciated  your 
Never-  Told  Tales.  Among  all  the  howling  madnesses 
of  the  human  race,  nothing  exceeds  the  prudishness 
which  keeps  all  our  young  men  and  women  in  igno- 
rance of  the  awfulness  of  venereal  diseases.  I  wish 
that  every  person  in  the  United  States,  man  and 
woman,  young  and  old,  could  have  a  copy  of  your 
Never- Told  Tales  in  his  or  her  possession. 

JACK  LONDON. 


-  t 

' 


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